I Want to Believe
by theredheadedleague
Summary: The X-Files are open, and Mulder and Scully get a new team member, a believer. Everything is going well for the new team until the past comes back to haunt our favorite agents. Rated T for mild swears and stuff. Mulder/OC, eventual Sculder
1. Chapter 1

Mulder sat in the basement, poring over a stack of books. A case in West Virginia had numerous people seeing strange glowing lights above their homes, but no government actions had been taken. "I tell you, we've got something here."

"Hello?" A woman pushed the door open, taking in the scene. She dressed like any other FBI agent, but her red hair made her stand out. She pushed a pair of glasses up her nose before introducing herself. "Agent Alice Hemming. I've been assigned to help you two."

"Nice to meet you," Scully smiled, shaking her hand. "Would you like a coffee? We just got a new machine."

"Yes, thank you." She set her briefcase down, looking at the pile of books on the desk, and the dozens of papers pinned on the wall above it.

"Who'd you have to piss off to get stuck down here?" Mulder asked.

"My supervisor. I slapped him," she admitted.

"And you're not being prosecuted?"

"He grabbed my ass. So I slapped him. He's in hearings, and I've been moved down here. Besides, I hear you work on the more interesting cases anyway. Thank you." She took the coffee cup that Scully had offered. "What are we looking at?"

"Sightings of strange lights above West Virginia," Mulder answered.

"They were right," Alice observed. "Thy told me you handled stuff that was out of the ordinary."

Scully sighed. "Are you a believer?"

"I haven't been to church since I left home."

"You and I both know that's not what I meant."

"I'd like to believe we're not alone. That in the billions of miles of space that we know about, we aren't the only ones."

"You hear that, Scully? She's a believer!"

"Mulder's a bit... enthusiastic," Scully had to explain as he stood up. "He wants proof-"

"Let's go. We can be in West Virginia in two hours or so. Talk in the car," Mulder instructed, grabbing his coat.

"So what did you do before this?" Mulder asked, turning off of the highway.

"We've had this discussion," Scully told him. "Like an hour ago."

"I was in the Behavior Analysis Unit," Alice offered. "My degree's in criminal psych. I used to interview the Hannibal Lecters of the world."

"Well, you didn't tell us this little town was a trailer park," Scully remarked as Mulder pulled in to a campground.

"Citrus Valley's a resort full of old hippies," Alice observed, watching a woman hang tye-dyed shirts on a clothesline. "Should we go into the office first?"

"You two go. I'm going to get a look around and stretch my legs," Scully said, getting out of the car. "I'll try to find the first guy who saw them." She headed off for the first row of trailers, waving to the woman who was hanging up her laundry and striking up a conversation.

"Don't worry about Scully," Mulder told Alice as they walked into the office. "She's still in denial, even though we've seen a lot in this job." He took out his ID, showing it to the man at the desk. "Agents Mulder and Hemming. We're here to see if anyone knows anything about those lights."

The man stroked his beard, thinking for a second before saying, "You'll think this is crazy."

"Try me."

"They appeared a week or so ago. Colin saw them first, he and his wife. Then a few more people started seeing them. I saw them myself a few nights ago. They appear and race around my trailer almost every night."

"What do they look like?" Alice asked, leaning on the counter.

"Bright blue. They zip around for a little while, then head towards some other trailers. A few of the other guys say they see different colors too."

Glancing at his name tag, Alice nodded. "Brian, you guys are a clean living, natural diet community, right?"

He smiled. "We're proud of it. We grow all of our own food, no insecticides, no fertilizer other than what we compost."

"That means pesticides are out," Mulder muttered. "It sounds like a genuine sighting."

"Where does your water come from?"

"We have it pumped in from the city nearby. We re-filter it, too. Want some bread? Mona just brought it in a little while ago." He nodded towards a covered platter on the counter. "We share pretty much everything."

"No, thanks. Can we go see the farm, though?"

"Sure. Follow me."

As they trailed behind Brian's large figure, Mulder said, "You seem like a natural at this."

"Thanks." She bit her lip, joyfully confessing, "I'm making this all up as I go along. I'm playing a TV cop in my head."

"Well, you're good at it."

"Oh my..." Thy were looking over a vast garden, roped off in different sections. A relatively large field held wheat and corn. The other side of the farm area was separated into root vegetables and vine plants, ringed by fruit trees and bushes. A few men and women were pulling weeds, one of them plucking berries from a bush and putting them in a bucket.

"Everything gets washed at least twice before even getting into the kitchen," Brian explained. "We all work in here together, and we eat together too."

"Mulder." Alice called him over to where she was standing, leaning in to whisper, "is that marijuana?"

He looked over at where the plants were growing. "Yes. Hey, Brian, do you guys ever smoke?"

Brian laughed. "That's only for medicine," he promised. "Sometimes we get teenagers breaking in to steal some of it, but we're pretty good about hiding it."

"Well, we didn't see anything," Mulder promised. "We should meet up with Scully. The sun's going to go down soon. Where's the best place to see the lights?"

"Almost anywhere."

Alice, Mulder, and Scully sat in chairs outside of the dining hall, waiting with Brian and Colin, the man who had fist seen the lights. While Mulder was discussing alien theories with Brian and Colin, Scully was filling Alice in on the X-Files. "We travel a whole lot."

"I'm not tied down. No spouse, no kids," Alice admitted. "What about you?"

Scully sighed, looking out at the sky. "When I was your age, I thought I'd be able to balance work and life. But I worked all the time. No, no family. Actually... well, it's complicated."

"Did he leave? I mean, if I'm not prying."

"We went our separate ways. That was years ago. And I still kind of love him."

"What about Mulder? Has he lived in that basement his whole life?"

"He had someone too, once. I think he still think of her sometimes. Their kid... well, that's in the past. He doesn't settle down well. I think he's been like that since... he's convinced his sister was abducted. It happened as a kid. Everyone else said she ran away or got kidnapped. He still wants to believe."

"The show should be starting soon," Mulder said, dropping into a seat next to them. "Have your phones ready to record."

"Well before the aliens show up, I'm going to go make some tea. You two want anything?"

"Can you make me some too?" Mulder asked.

"Scully?"

"Thanks, but I'll stick with coffee." She held her cup up, Alice nodding. They watched her walk away, Scully clucked, "Stop checking her out. She's gotta be like 25."

"Hey, we've got a cute new intern. I think she likes me."

"Be careful. She slapped the last guy who-"

"Agents, look! There! Right there!" Colin pointed to a spot in the sky above a distant trailer. Mulder rushed over to where he stood, Scully slowly standing. Alice returned with styrofoam cups in both hands. She set them down and grabbed a pair of binoculars, scanning the sky. "See it? Right by Joanne and Barry's trailer!"

"I don't see anything," Mulder fretted. He borrowed Alice's binoculars, Brian exclaiming that the lights were moving. "Where? Oh!" A blue light had appeared by an old trailer. Mulder ran towards it, Alice instinctively following, drawing her gun. He whipped around a corner, seeing that the blue blinking light had reappeared. She reached him seconds after he had gotten to the spot. Hanging his head in defeat, Mulder pointed to a box hung above the RV. "Bug zapper."

Brian, Colin, and Scully arrived a moment later. "It's not a UFO," Alice gestured to the bug zapper, which glowed blue again as a mosquito flew into its grate. Scully rolled her eyes, Mulder looking around for any sign of an aircraft. "There's nothing here."

"There has to be. I just saw-"

"How long have you all been eating that bread?" Alice asked, turning to Brian and Colin.

"Week and a half, two weeks, maybe. Why does that matter?"

"And I didn't have any. Scully? Mulder?" They shook their heads as Alice explained, "You've got ergot poisoning. It makes you hallucinate things. Mix it with the marijuana-"

"What marijuana?" Scully raised an eyebrow.

"They grow it for medicine, or that's what they say. Even though there's way too much there just to be used for medicine. But if you've got something growing in your wheat crop, it could affect all of you. All it took was for Colin to see a light like that, tell the story the next day, and everyone was seeing it." They followed her to the kitchen, Brian unlocking the hall. She rummaged through the extensive pantry before pulling out a bag of flour. She opened it, showing them all the black spots in it. "Ergot. Not aliens."

Mulder sat in the back of the car, halfway trying to sleep as Scully drove back towards DC. Alice took up the other back seat, her shoes on the floor on top of her bag. "Sorry we didn't find any proof, guys."

"That's okay with me," Scully insisted. "I'm fine with normal life."

"Hmm," Mulder sighed. "I want to believe. Proof would be nice."

"We'll find something," Alice yawned.

A few minutes later, Scully heard her breathing drop off into sleep. When she looked in the rearview mirror, she could see that Alice was using Mulder's shoulder as a pillow, Mulder staring out the window. "You're right. She looks up to you. Be careful, Mulder. The future of the X-Files is being molded right now. Young, impressionable minds and all that."


	2. Chapter 2

A young man swung the door to the basement room open, dropping a file in front of Mulder. "Got a case for you, Spooky." He left quickly, taking out his phone to answer a text.

Alice spun around in her chair, raising an eyebrow. "'Spooky'?"

"That's what they call me. I've gotten used to it," Mulder explained, opening the manila folder. "Guy in South Carolina claims to be a demon. A kid's dead because of it. Want to go?"

"Sure. What about Scully? She hasn't come in yet."

"She's been called down to the principal's office," Mulder said, gathering up some books. "Mind if you drive? I want to read up on this."

Alice was driving through Maryland when Mulder began to read aloud. "'Experts all seem to agree on holy water as a weapon'. Where do we get some of that?"

"We can rob a church if we have to. Am I supposed to branch off to the right here?"

Mulder consulted their map. "Not yet. Next exit." He went back to his books, Alice glancing over at him and shaking her head.

"Did you ever have a life outside of the X-Files?"

"They've been my life since I was a kid."

"You never got married or had kids or tried to settle down? You've just been hunting aliens and monsters your whole life?"

He sighed, closing his book. "I tried that, once. It didn't work out well."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sounds like you just did. Shoot."

As she follows the road's right branch, Alice questioned, "You and Scully... Was that a thing? I sense some sort of tension there."

"That was a thing," he nodded. "Years ago." After a brief silence, he asked, "What about you? Are you seeing anyone? A pretty, young FBI agent like you surely-"

"No."

"Oookay, touchy subject there."

Alice took a deep breath before confessing, "I was seeing someone. We were together for nearly a year and a half. I was madly in love. We were going to get married, I swear. At least until her best friend stole her from me."

"Hmm."

"I know that look. Guys and girls, whoever I fancy." She paused before adding, "Look, I trust you, so I'm going to tell you this. It's also because you believe. The girl she left me for... there was something off about her. I mean, not totally human. And I was right. They were murdered, at least according to the report. Mulder, the security camera showed a man glowing silver when he killed them. It's all been officially erased, but... I still remember it all."

"You're crying."

"I know."

He handed her a few napkins that he'd fished from the center console. "I'm sorry."

"That's why I accepted the X-Files when they told me I should transfer."

"My sister was abducted when I was a kid. I was in the room, and I should've done something, but I just couldn't move. That's what got me into this."

When they pulled into a rest stop parking lot, Alice turned to Mulder, who looked up from his book. "Thank you." She leaned across the console to give him a hug. He hugged her back, deep in thought.

"Dillon Andrews, 34 years old." Mulder and Alice followed a police officer through the town's jail. "He's our suspect claiming to be possessed. He strangled a twelve-year-old boy outside of the middle school two nights ago. Mr. Andrews, some visitors."

"Thanks, Officer Kennewick," Alice nodded, walking into the room where Andrews was shackled to a chair. "Agents Hemming and Mulder, FBI."

Mulder leaned against the wall. "Demons?"

"I'm fighting for control," Andrews grimaced. "I didn't kill that boy. He did."

"Who?"

"Amon. He-" Andrews' head dropped to his chest as he made a hissing sound.

"The commander in Hell?" Alice asked. Mulder nodded. "Is he okay?"

"He will be fine," Andrews slurred. His voice became stronger, deeper somehow. "He summoned me."

"Who are we talking to now?" Alice questioned.

"Amun, the Marquis of Hell and commander of forty legions."

"Why did you come to Earth?"

"He bound me to this body. Summoned me by sacrificing a child. He craved power. He will be weak no more."

"I thought Amun was some sort of wolf-snake demon," Mulder objected.

Andrews laughed manically. "You simple humans can't understand shape shifting or possession, can you?"

"If you're really Amun, why are you letting them bind you here? Can't you just break out, your Powerful Evilness?"

"You question me? I'm nearly a god."

"How do we know you're not just a sick man?"

Andrews knit his eyebrows, glaring at Mulder, who said nothing. He gestured at the wall of the cell with his chin, Mulder slamming into the concrete. Alice scrambled to where he lay. "Mulder!" She turned to where Andrews' body sat. "What have you done?"

"I'll be fine," Mulder groaned, raising a hand to his head. "Skull's not cracked or anything." Alice helped him up. "I think I'll talk to the DA out there, though."

Alice watched him walk out of the cell before observing, "You say you're one of the highest ranking demons in Hell, right? Then why didn't you kill him?"

"Because. He means something to you. And I like you. You're curious. And you're afraid. I can smell it. It radiates off of you."

"That's a lie."

"Which part?"

Alice crossed her arms. "You admit that Andrews killed that boy. But why not just break out of here?"

"Andrews is a sick man. I need a real host before I can act. Someone strong. Like you."

"No," she shook her head.

"No you won't do it? Fine."

"I'm not storing enough for you."

Mulder appeared at the door. "Alice?" She walked over, Mulder whispering, "They've got a priest who is going to try an exorcism. If that doesn't work, then we're out of our league here. Do you have any Advil or something?"

"Are you sure you're okay?" She handed over a bottle of painkillers from her bag.

He downed three, pocketing the bottle and handing her a vial. "I'll be fine. Keep this with you, in case this goes south."

An elderly man in formal church robes walked into the cell, Andrews hissing. The man opened a book, reading, "Unde factum est ad infernum conjecti daemone, et ora pro nobis ad tutelam. Unde ad eum pertinet, nomen sanctum tuum."

Andrews only laughed, the priest's eyes widening. Alice glanced at Mulder, who was also in shock. "Christo." She frowned, circling the chair. "That's not a demon."

"Then what is it?" the priest gaped.

"I'm not sure, Father. But it didn't flinch at a holy name. So it's not a demon." She turned to Andrews, asking, "What are you?"

"I am God. And I am vengeful."

The priest began to cough, grasping at his throat. "Please... let go... omnis immundus spiritus... let go of me, you... unholy..."

"Mulder, do something!" Mulder was trying to help the priest, but he was slowly suffocating as something chocked him from behind Andrews' eyes. Alice wheeled around, facing the being tied in the chair. "Let go of him."

"Make me, sweet cheeks." The priest fainted, Mulder catching him before he could fall onto the concrete. "Let's turn up the heat, shall we?" Mulder began to cough.

"Alice-"

"Stop it!" Mulder kept coughing, doubling over as he gasped for oxygen. "Stop it! If I say yes, will you let him go?"

"Don't," Mulder croaked. "Alice, don't."

"Yes."

"Good," Andrews' face twisted into a sadistic grin.

Mulder took a deep breath as a black, shadowy figure floated up from Andrews' body, moving towards Alice. "No!"

The being stopped, as if it had smacked into an invisible wall. Alice pulled something out of her pocket, flicking it on the ground. A circle of fire bloomed around the hovering shadow. The creature began to wail, dissolving as the flames died. "What the hell was that?"

"A spirit. That's why the demon exorcism didn't work. Luckily holy oil did."

Mulder sat on his bed, eating out of a take-out box. Alice sat in the chair by the cheap motel desk, typing up a report on her laptop. "You sure you don't want to get your head checked out? That came out wrong. You know what I meant."

"I'll be fine. No one'll notice of Spooky Mulder's got a few more loose screws. Lo mein?" He held the box out.

"My favorite. Thanks. But they still shouldn't call you that. It's not a nice nickname." She took some of the food that he offered, scooping it onto a paper plate.

She clicked her laptop shut, grabbed her plate, and sat down next to him as he asked, "What would you call me, then?"

"I think Mulder is a fine name. Or Fox. Makes you sound like James Bond, solving crimes, being all mysterious, and getting all the ladies," she laughed. "You're getting sauce all over your white shirt."

Mulder shrugged as she balanced some napkins on the top of his head. "Speaking of ladies, are you going to that FBI charity gala thing next week?"

"I might. I've got a dress, but-"

"Need a date? I figured I should bring someone."

"What about Scully?"

"She's not much of a dancer."

"In that case, I would be honored."

Mulder smiled, but his face turned serious quickly. "Earlier today, that thing... Why did you say yes?"

"I knew I could trick it."

"And if it didn't work?"

"I would have fought it."

"You could've been killed."

"It's better me than you. Or a citizen, like that priest." She had gotten up, putting her shoes back on. "Look, I should go get some sleep, especially if I'm going to drive all the way home tomorrow."

Mulder stood too. "But you still could have died."

"It was going to kill you."

"I've been doing this for years. I'm expendable."

"Not to me." She pulled him into a hug. "Mulder, don't be so self-depreciating. We need you."

He let go of her for a second before giving her a kiss. She didn't move, Mulder apologizing profusely. "I am so sorry. I just-"

She kissed him back, pulling away to say, "I should go."

"Um..."

"Goodnight, Mulder." She smiled, heading out of the door. He could hear her unlocking her door as he sat back on his bed in confusion.


	3. Chapter 3

"Have you seen this?" Alice brought a newspaper article over to where Mulder was sitting. He had kept his distance recently, not wanting to do anything wrong. "There have been a series of fires in Virginia that have killed government employees. They think the same guy is behind all of them."

"How is that an X-File?" Scully asked, joining them at the desk.

"There was one house with a security camera. Watch this." Alice turned on the television, putting a DVD on. It showed a masked man walking on the lawn, creeping up to the wall along a hedge. He held up his open palm, a ball of fire springing from it. He hurled it through the window before running off. "The fire was hot enough to begin to melt the rebar inside of the building. I've already taken it down to the pyro guys. They agreed that something fishy was going on."

"Well, we've only got a few hours before that gala tonight. We need to be in the hotel ballroom at six for the dinner," Scully reminded them as she looked at the file. "We can at least interview the last family this happened to. They're twenty minutes away."

They arrived at a small, yellow house where a woman was watching her daughter bike up and down the driveway. Mulder parked on the street, holding up his ID as they approached the house. "Mrs. Laing? I'm Agent Mulder. This is Agent Hemming and Agent Scully. Can we talk to you for a few minutes?"

"Yes. Cara, darling, stay in the driveway. Lindsey should be here soon. Her mom's bringing her over." They followed her into the house, taking seats in the den. "I assume this is about my husband."

"Yes. Rich worked in the FBI, right? Translations?" Scully asked, taking out a notepad.

Mrs. Laing nodded. "He translated documents and worked on decoding things. He spoke six languages."

"And last month, he was in his at when..."

"He was driving home. He called around seven to say he was stopping for gas. I got worried when he wasn't home by eight. They said... they said he'd stopped and a man had come up to the car and... and it had burst into flames, just like that."

Mulder passed her some tissues, asking, "Did your husband have any enemies?"

"No. He translated documents, for heaven's sake. How do you make enemies doing that?"

Alice stood up, looking at a family picture on the mantle. "Nice alien t-shirts. Roswell?"

"Yeah," Mrs. Laing smiled. "We were there on Cara's fifth birthday. Rich was a big believer. He said he'd seen an alien as a kid. He'd tell Cara stories all the time..."

Alice and Mulder exchanged a look. "Did he get calls in the middle of the night? Or calls that he didn't explain? Would he go places randomly?"

"Don't all agents?"

"What languages could your husband speak?" Alice asked.

"English, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, French, uh, Spanish, and something else. I could never understand it. Swahili maybe? I don't know, it was weird." Mulder picked up a wedding photograph, studying it carefully. "What does that have to do with his death?"

"I was just wondering. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Laing. My condolences." They all shook her hand, heading back to the car, where Mulder said, "He had an implant by his left ear."

"It could've been a hearing aid. They have implantable ones now," Scully countered.

"There was never one in his file," Alice told them. "The FBI pulls records of all surgeries, remember?"

"Does he look suspicious to you?" Mulder pontes towards a man standing by the bar at the hotel. The ballroom they occupied was slowly filling with people, half of them agents that they had never seen before.

"He's probably an HR guy," Scully reasoned. "Give it a rest, okay? He isn't an alien."

"Dana! Great to see you!"

"Greg! Glad you could make it!" Scully smiled, following an agent with greying hair from Counterterrorism.

Mulder made his way over to the bar, ordering a drink and keeping an eye on the man he had been watching earlier. He looked like a recent hire. He was pretty young, probably early 30s at most, with light had and green eyes. He had a military bearing, but something just seemed off about him. Maybe he was too rigid. "Sorry I'm late." Alice had appeared behind him while he was watching the man drink a margarita. "The Wilson Bridge was a mess."

He turned and looked her up and down. "You look amazing. Love the dress."

"Thanks. You clean up nicely too. We should probably find our table before the Director starts speaking." She grabbed his hand, leading him to the tables that covered half of the ballroom.

An hour and a half later, dinner and drinks had been consumed and the last speaker had finished. A DJ had taken over and was beginning to play music, the dance floor filling up quickly. The old guard of the FBI was divided, half of them going to dance and the other half staying at their tables to chat. Meanwhile, almost all of the younger agents and their guests had rushed to the floor. "Care to dance, milady?" Mulder offered his hand.

"Of course," Alice blushed. "I'd love to." They waltzed around a few other couples, Mulder looking over her shoulder. She dropped her voice, asking, "Are you still watching him?"

"He's smoking a cigar with the Director and some of the other higher-ups. Nothing too suspicious."

"Hey, Spook." An agent nodded at them as the music changed, becoming more lively. "How'd you wind up with a trophy date?"

"Don't call him that."

"I'd be careful, Miller. She could probably gut you with your tie pin," Mulder laughed.

"Mulder!" The table that the man Mulder had been watching was sitting at had sprung into flames.

"He's pyrokinetic. Cool."

The table cloth was put out, people laughing as the young man apologized profusely for knocking over a candle. "I hate fire," Mulder confessed. "As a kid, I had a friend whose house burned down. I had nightmare about it for years."

"I understand," Alice nodded as he put a hand around her waist. "Mulder, I- watch out!" A ball of fire had rolled onto the dance floor, sending couples fleeing. Mulder pulled her away quickly, heading for the side of the room as someone's drink spilled, sending flames flowing across the wood floor. The man they had been watching laughed, flicking an orb of fire towards a crowd of people pushing towards the door. Alice watched as Scully and her date made it out, the agent flicking more flames towards the bar, taunting the crowd. She shook her head, thinking what she was about to do was insane, but still ran towards where the man stood, lighting drinks by dipping his fingers into them. He tossed a flaming shot glass at the wall, flames licking the wallpaper. "Alice, no!" Mulder had not time to think. He ran after her, despite the tongues of fire trailing up one of the walls.

"Who do you want? You've been working your way up to someone, I know that much!" Alice shouted at the man, who was busy throwing flames at the fire exits to block them off.

"Your Director snubbed my request for special assignments for the last time. I've shown him what I can do."

"That's ridiculous! Killing all of these people, why couldn't you just shoot him?"

"Now where's the fun in that?"

Mulder had frozen, reaching out for Alice's hand. He watched in horror as the entire southern wall was engulfed, taking the DJ's booth with it. The music wailed, distorting as the equipment was melted before it totally died.

Alice reached into a pocket sewn onto her dress. Mulder hadn't noticed it before. "I'm sorry." She pulled out a handgun, shooting the man between the eyes and watching him crumple. As a beam fell from the ceiling, she pulled Mulder with her, smashing a window and pushing him out of it and into the bushes before pulling the last few guests through it with her.

Fire crews had arrived, and Alice found Mulder wrapped in a blanket, Scully beside him. "You three are cleared to go," an EMT told them. "The hotel across the street is taking people in if you don't want to head home."

"I'm getting the first cab I can out of this part of the district," Scully shook her head, ruffling her hair to knock soot out of it. "Goodnight, you two. Be careful out here."

Alice and Mulder wandered over to the hotel, where several people milled about in the lobby. "Hi," Alice smiled at the bellhop. "Can we have a room?"

He handed her a key, saying, "331. Elevator's to the left."

"One bed," Mulder remarked when Alice opened the door and kicked off her shoes. "You can have it. I'll take the couch."

"That's ridiculous." She kicked off her high heels by the door. "Pick a side. But first, go take a shower. I'm going to call the Bureau."

When Alice got out of the shower, Mulder was staring out of the window at the massive cleanup going on across the road. "You're going to sleep in your suit pants?"

"That's all I've got. I'm not wearing the entire thing, at least."

"Thank god I always wear shorts under dresses. Makes it easier to run," she joked, sitting down on the bed next to him.

"The last time I had a beautiful woman in a bra and a pair of tight shorts next to me, I think I was at a strip club. Especially smelling like smoke and cheap hotel soap."

"Mulder."

"By the way, we never really discussed what happened last week."

"You want me to be honest?" She bit her lip, telling him, "I think you're hot. Especially without a shirt."

Mulder smiled, leaning in to kiss her. Alice kissed him back, holding his face in her hands as she moved to straddle his lap. He broke away just long enough to say, "Do you-"

"Ssh." She trailed her index finger down his chest, silencing him by the time she reached his waistband.

"You're sure you want to?"

"Please."


	4. Chapter 4

"'Woman dies in house fire after firefighters claim she stuck to the ceiling'?" Scully read, setting down a newspaper. "Sound like a problem for us?"

"We'll take it," Mulder said, grabbing the paper. "Alice, grab your bag. We're going to Nebraska."

"Why? It could've been a hallucination. Only one man saw it," Alice countered.

"Don't be so defensive," Mulder chided. "We don't have anything else. Why not check it out? Scully?"

"Let's go. There's a flight leaving in less than an hour. It wouldn't hurt to check it out."

Alice was busy typing out an outline of the case on the plane when Mulder fell asleep, leaning into her. She mindlessly nudged him over to the window so she could keep typing. Across the aisle, Scully was also working on a document for the Bureau. "Did he do something to piss you off?" Scully finally asked, looking up from her computer.

Alice hit the 'save' key before turning to say, "No. I guess I'm just in a mood."

"Is it the hearing? Your old supervisor's?"

"I've already testified. If I'm lucky, he'll be apprenticing with the janitor in a few weeks."

Scully raised an eyebrow. "Then why the awkwardness around Mulder?"

"I like him. I really do. But I'm not letting it get in the way of the job. And he's," she sighed, "he's Mulder. Things are complicated as it is. I don't need to make it any worse."

"Does he know?"

"Well..."

"Has anything happened between you two?" Scully had to pause as a stewardess clattered by with a cart.

Alice blushed slightly, admitting, "Once."

"Tell him," Scully insisted.

"I'm not making-"

They were interrupted by the captain announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts as we begin our descent."

Mulder yawned, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "Almost there?"

"Yeah," Alice nodded, stowing her laptop in a bag.

When they drove up to the crime scene, an antique car was sitting outside of a neighbor's home. "Nice," Mulder whistled, running a hand over the hood.

"Hey, watch the car!" A man in a suit came down the steps, jogging over to them. "Agent Richards. Agent Roth is inside."

"Agents Mulder, Scully, and Hemming," Mulder said, extending his hand. "Mind if we see some credentials?"

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," Agent Richards laughed, taking his badge out of his pocket.

The man held up his ID, the others showing him theirs. "Five agents on a simple arson case?" Scully questioned, watching another man walk over from the house.

"Agent Roth." The taller of the two shook all of their hands, casting a glance at his partner. "Have you ever seen anything like this? We're suspecting cult activity, especially with the cattle mutilations on the farms outside of town."

"We're going to head to the farm where most of them happened," Agent Richards said. "Feel free to accompany us."

When they were all in the car and driving down a country road, Scully told the others, "It's highly unlikely that they're FBI. I'd put them at the top of the list of suspects."

"Those ID's are old-issue, if they're even real," Alice added. "Besides, what kind of agents rent a car like that?"

"Take the turn here," Scully pointed, the car ahead of them swerving onto a long driveway. "I'll go talk to the farmer with the other two... agents. Why don't you two check out the farm?"

They parked outside of the farmhouse, next to the other agents' car. Mulder led the way towards the barn that dominated the skyline. He flicked the lights on after breaking open the lock on the door, illuminating rows of old stalls and stacks of hay. "I'll take the left. Head right and meet me at the end."

Alice carefully walked down the right wall, checking each stall for signs of life. She was almost at the end when Mulder called her over. He was standing in a stall that had once been occupied by a horse named Pumpkin. It was now taken up by an altar made out of a few boards. Signs were painted above it, and candles were set up around an open space. The headless bodies of chickens lay on the ground. "They're still fairly fresh."

"There's a set of prints leading out the door," Alice observed, following them outside. "They end right here. But there's an odd burn..."

Mulder joined her, staring at an oddly circus burned patch of grass. "This is almost textbook. I wonder..." He turned back to the barn, beginning to climb a ladder that led to the roof. "Yes!" He pointed out towards the field, taking out his phone to get a picture.

"What is it?" she called, watching him and hoping he wouldn't fall.

"We've got crop circles!"

"Come on down, please," she begged, holding her breath as he climbed down on the rickety ladder.

"Crop circles, sacrifices, mutilations, circular burn patterns, this is good."

"It's too good," Alice countered. "Especially since we can't blame the farmer. He's 73, according to the report. Not exactly the cult activity type."

"This might not even be connected to the house fire, Mulder."

"What happened to believing?"

"I'm not going to believe it if it's ridiculous."

They were trudging back towards the farmhouse when Mulder asked, "Is this about the night of the gala?"

"Why would it be?"

"Because you sound like you're mad at me for something, Alice."

"I'm not mad at you. You were amazing. It's just, I don't want to drag this into the job. I-"

She was cut off by the taller of the two agents, Agent Roth, running over to them. "We've been trying to find you. There's no cell service out here. We're setting up shifts for a stakeout now."

11:48 PM, Old Farmhouse

Alice and Mulder sat on the hood of their rental car, which they had parked in the shade of the tree line. They had been there for nearly an hour, having switched places with Agents Richards and Roth, who were staked out at the opposite end of the field. Scully sat inside the farmhouse, watching over the farmer and his wife, who sat up with her in the living room. Mulder held a pair of binoculars and scanned the sky every few minutes. "You're sure you aren't cold?"

"I'm fine."

Mulder shook his head, handing her his jacket. "What's that?"

"Shooting star." Sure enough, no ship arrived over the farm. Alice grudgingly wrapped herself in his jacket. It did smell nice, like coffee and old books. Like Mulder.

"About what you were saying earlier..."

"I don't want to ruin the department over anything personal."

"It wouldn't ruin the department."

"I don't want to mess things up," she admitted.

"Well, if you change your mind, I'm here."

"There!" Alice jumped up, running towards a glowing light near the barn. Mulder followed, reaching for his gun as they approached. "Shh." A group of four people was gathered in the barn. On the other side of the door, Agent Richards was poised to rush into the room. He nodded at them, listening to the group chant. Alice noted that something had been sprinkled in a line near the door, either by the group or the other agents.

Agent Richards mouthed a countdown, Mulder and Alice getting ready to burst in on the ceremony. "Three. Two. One. Go."

"Freeze! FBI!" Agent Roth ran in from the other end of the barn, surrounding the group. The chanting group stopped, looking around. Agent Roth approached them cautiously, pulling off their hoods one by one until he reached a man with eyes that glowed fiercely. "This one."

Agent Richards pulled out a knife and stabbed the man, who wailed before releasing a dark figure from his body, which disappeared out of a window. The other cult members looked at each other. One of them broke off in a run, but was tackled by Mulder, who dragged him back.

Richards and Roth met up with the others after taking the three cult members to the police on murder charges. They had taken over a corner table at an old diner. "So what department are you in?" Alice finally asked.

"I'm gonna be honest. We aren't FBI. We take care of stuff like this. Kind of a special ops thing," Agent Richards admitted. "Are you actually FBI?"

"Yeah. We won't turn you in, but keep in contact with us. We'll probably run into you on some cases. We work on the X-Files, a group of paranormal cases."

As they walked out to their cars, Agent Richards stopped Alice. "Are you two a thing?"

"What?"

"You and Agent Mulder. Because if you aren't, you two really need to resolve some tension there. Just saying."


	5. Chapter 5

Alice was woken up by someone banging on her door in the middle of the night. She rolled out of bed, grabbing her gun from the nightstand and slowly walking over to the door. She peered through the curtains, seeing that it was Mulder. With a sigh, she unlocked the door. Before she could open it all the way, he was saying, "There's been another one. They found the body out on Route 7."

"Come on in."

Mulder sat down on the bed and flicked through TV channels as Alice got ready. They had been working on a serial cannibal case for the last two days, but their killer had gone silent. Scully joined them a few minutes later. "I just got a call from the local police department. They've brought the body to the coroner's, but they're holding off on the autopsy for us."

"We can be there in fifteen minutes," Alice said, grabbing her bag. "Let's go."

They arrived at the coroner's and signed in, pulling on rubber gloves at the door to the operating rounds. "Sorry to wake you, but this is the third one in a week," Dr. Welsh said, taking a sheet off of the body. She had shown them photographs of the other two victims, and this one resembled the dismemberment of the others. "Let's roll." She clicked on a tape recorder and started to talk. "Dr. Lina Welsh, recording at 1:52 AM, February 13th. In attendance are Agents Mulder, Hemming, and Scully. Agent Scully is a medical doctor who will be assisting."

"The deceased is an African American male, approximately 60 years old," Scully noted, helping Dr. Welsh comb the body for stray hairs or fragments of metal, rock, or other identifying materials. "Cause of death seems to be loss of blood and secondary shock, stemming from a severe wound to the jugular vein. Several bite marks are visible, seemingly human. Dental IDs may be possible."

Mulder's phone began to ring, and he stepped outside. When he came back, he announced, "The investigative team wants to know if we want to come out."

"I'm kind of busy," Scully said, holding up her blood-covered hands.

"Alice and I'll go. We've got to get there quickly, though. They think they've got something."

Scully nodded, going back to her autopsy as they left. Mulder drove 20 miles over the speed limit, Alice hoping they wouldn't have to make any sudden stops. When they got there, three policemen were investigating a blood trail. "This one's new," one of them explained. "It wasn't here when they found the body ten yards that way."

"Our guy's still in the area. Have you followed it?"

"Just waiting on you two. We figured you'd like to be a part of it."

Mulder nodded, drawing his gun. "This way." The group moved silently through the wooded area, noticing that the bloodstained ground was leading to a small shack, halfway obscured by trees.

"Lewis, Barnes, with me," the lead officer instructed. "You two around the other side."

Alice and Mulder split off from the group, edging towards the rotting door of the hovel. They broke the door down when they heard the officers on the other side smash into the shack. Looking around, they knew that they had found the killer's hideaway. Sharp implements hung from the ceiling, and bloodstains were everywhere. As Alice marveled at a bloody handprint on the wall, there was a rustling noise from behind a plastic curtain. Someone ran forward, nearly knocking her over before jumping out of a broken window. Mulder tore after the figure, the others trying to keep up with him.

They heard three gunshots, followed by silence. "Mulder!"

"I'm fine!" came his answer. "I've got him, though."

They came up to a figure laying in the dark. The man was relatively young, but looked unusually strong. Mulder had shot him in the leg and in the stomach, since, "He was hiding and tried to jump me. That should keep him somewhat still."

Officer Barnes went to get the patrol car as the others hoisted up the wounded man and carried him out of the woods. The man dragged his legs underneath him, but eventually they were able to shove him into the back of the car in handcuffs.

"Thank you, Agents." The police shook hands with them before driving off.

"Nice save there, Mulder," Alice smiled. "I thought he'd shot you for a second."

"Thanks. All in a day's work."

She got into the car, saying, "Let's go pick Scully up. I'm exhausted."

"Alice, do you think I'm spooky?"

She turned to face him, saying, "I think it's spooky sitting out here when we just arrested a cannibalistic murderer less than half a mile away."

"But do you think I'm spooky?"

"No. I think you're cute. A little odd, but cute." She kissed his cheek, adding, "But I also think we should start driving."

"You got him?" Scully asked when they came to get her.

"Yeah. He's down at the jail. We get to interview him tomorrow," Alice told her with a yawn. "But I called the Moon Inn and got us a room. They only had one left, though. So we only have two beds."

"I'll take the couch, don't worry," Mulder promised.

When they arrived, Alice got out to check in. Scully took the opportunity to ask, "So are you two a thing or what?"

"Huh?"

"They way you look at her..."

"No, we aren't together."

"Really?"

"Well, there was one night," he confessed. "After that fire, we split a hotel room, thinking we'd only pay for one. I offered to let her have the bed, but it just kind of happened."

"And?"

"And what?"

"Do you care about her, Mulder?" He was silent, Scully continuing, "I can tell you do. You can't deny that she-"

"She's interesting. She's beautiful. And she doesn't think I'm crazy. To her, I'm not Spooky Mulder. I'm just-" he stopped as she got into the car, telling them that their room was around the side of the hotel.

Alice kicked her shoes off and flopped down onto one of the beds, falling asleep in a few seconds. Scully sat down on the other bed, taking her shoes off and turning to Mulder, saying, "No sofa, Mr. Chivalrous. You gonna join her or sleep on the luggage rack?"

Mulder said nothing, taking off his jacket and gingerly lying down next to Alice. He took a breath, putting an arm around her. Scully smiled, watching the young girl curl up to Mulder. "Why are you two not together already?" she whispered from her bed.

"She doesn't want to complicate things," Mulder whispered back.

"Mulder?" Alice mumbled in her sleep.

"I'm right here."


	6. Chapter 6

**A.N: Hello, my lovely readers! I'm glad you're enjoying this so far to the lovely anon that complained about Mary-Sue-ness, just you wait. There are most definitely issues that'll be brought up soon. And they're big. No spoilers, but so much betrayal is gonna happen. I just have to set up for it to make it all the more heartbreaking. Anyway, enjoy!**

* * *

"Child abductions in Oregon!" Mulder threw a file, Alice catching it before it could hit her.

She opened it hesitantly. "You make it sound like it's Christmas. There are three kids missing, Mulder."

"Why not check it out?" Scully asked. "We could use a break from the Bureau's basement."

During the flight, Scully turned to Alice, asking, "So? Are you two together yet?"

"No. I'm not risking- hey, Mulder. We were just discussing the case."

Mulder had returned to his seat, bringing them both drinks. "Three kids go missing in the Oregon woods over the period of a week. One more was just reported missing. All of them are under 12."

"So we can put together a basic profile. I got the crime scene photos emailed to all three of us," Alice told them. "I've gone through them and there doesn't seem to be much of a connection between them, aside from the fact that they all happened in the same forest."

Mulder clicked through photographs on his computer, stopping at a footprint. "Either our kidnapper is some sort of animal, or he's wearing something on the bottom of his shoes. These look way too fuzzy to be human footprints."

"Maybe they aren't. Our guy could've been wearing bearskins or something, for all we know," Scully reasoned. "We'll have to talk to the police and the families themselves when we get there."

Alice had fallen asleep on Mulder's shoulder over Wyoming. Scully took the opportunity to ask, "She sleeps next to you in every hotel that we get. Please tell me you're going to ask her out soon."

"She doesn't want to jeopardize the department," Mulder explained.

Scully scoffed. "She likes you. You like her. Go for it."

"You're not mad about it?"

"What we had ended a long time ago. I'm glad to see you're moving on."

The Sargent leaned on his desk, shaking his head. "These families have nothing in common. Tucker, the last boy who disappeared, makes four now. He's nine years old, Agents. We've never had anything like this happen here before."

"I'm sure you've checked the sex offender registries in a 25-mile radius," Scully said, looking at his computer.

"I expanded it to 100 miles," the Sargent affirmed. "I have my best people on it, but nothing's turned up so far."

"We should head out to the woods. Maybe we'll pick up something the investigative teams missed," Mulder proposed. The Sargent nodded, telling them to call in anything that they uncovered.

The expanse of woods was near a park, which had been closed and cordoned off with a police line. "The last family was at campsite 14," Alice called, walking down the path that led to the campsites. "It looks like everything's been- wait."

Mulder jogged over to where she was bent over, looking at a set of footprints. They led into the woods, straight into the foliage. "Let's go."

Scully, the only one with a flashlight, went first. They followed her until they reached a river, Alice wading across to report that there were no footprints on the other side. "The tracks just drop off. Maybe he waded grouch the river, parallel to the shore for a while."

"Take the left. I'll come across and go right," Scully said, taking her shoes off to wade across.

"I'll stand here, then," Mulder laughed, searching the ground for any sign of human activity.

When they met up again, they had found nothing other than a few pieces of garbage. "No footprints, nothing. Whoever this is must be strong enough to carry the children, since there's only one set of prints," Scully observed.

"No signs of struggle mean he either killed them or knocked them out somehow," Alice added as they trudged back to their rental car. "We're going to have to stake the place out. Where can we get a cheap tent?"

Mulder had started a campfire and was lazily roasting marshmallows when Scully said, "I'll take the first watch, if you want."

"I'll take second," Alice volunteered. "Don't forget, we should keep the fire going so we don't freeze. It's supposed to be in the 50s tonight."

"I guess I'm third, then."

"Mulder, you've eaten half the bag of marshmallows," Scully laughed, watching him set one on fire.

"I offered to make you two some."

"No, you offered to share the bag with us. Meaning we got like two each," Alice smiled, standing to add another log to the fire.

"I'll make you another, if you want."

"That's okay. I'm stealing your jacket, though." She wrapped herself in his coat, which had been hanging on the clothesline. Campsite 12 had treated them well. The water ran, the fire pit was in good condition, and they had managed to pitch a tent without severe difficulties. They were also in a prime kidnapping position.

When they finally decided to get some sleep while Scully took watch, Mulder had eaten the majority of the marshmallows. "No messing around, you two," Scully warned as they ducked into the tent. "Behave yourselves."

Mulder lay down on one of the air mattresses, Alice zipping up the tent and throwing a blanket at him before lying down, letting him wrap an arm around her. "Do you think he's going to show? I don't want to use a kid as bait, but we might have to," she whispered.

"Mm, maybe. Your hair smells nice."

"We grabbed extra batteries for the flashlight at Walmart, right?"

"Yeah. Alice, I know you don't want to do anything that could put the X-Files in danger, but I really like you. You're brilliant, you're beautiful-"

"Mulder-"

"And you seem to to not think I'm completely crazy."

"You're not."

"When we get back, do you want to grab dinner sometime?"

"Are you asking me out?"

"Yeah."

She rolled over, facing him. "Then yeah."

"Really?"

"You're surprised?"

"It's not often that Spooky Mulder gets a date. Especially not with someone as... nice as you. As perfect as you."

"Mulder-"

"I don't get out much. I mean, I work in a basement. So most of the girls I see-"

"Mulder," she interrupted, "maybe you should stop talking now."

"That's probably a good idea," he agreed, giving her a kiss.

When Scully woke Alice up for her shift as night watchman, Mulder was still holding her. Alice blinked a few times, slowly extracting herself from Mulder's arms and taking the flashlight from Scully. "I'll wake him up in two hours," she yawned, checking her watch as she crept out of the tent.

She took over the folding chair that Scully had moved by the fire, trying to stay awake. Glancing back at the tent, she realized that she was dating an FBI agent and smiled. Mulder was sweet. Yeah, he could be a little weird, but he was there. Alice added a log to the fire and opened a book, beginning to read in the glow of the firelight. She had been reading for almost half an hour when she heard a branch crack in the forest.

Reaching for her gun, Alice stood, shining her flashlight towards the source of the noise. Before she could make out the figure, it was running at her. Something slashed across her body, the being shoving her aside and nearly into the fire pit. "Mulder! Scully!"

They were out in seconds, brandishing their weapons. Alice blinked, confused at how she ended up on the ground again. Mulder was holding her, Scully nowhere in sight. "Mulder, what-"

"Ssh. You're losing a lot of blood. Scully's chased the guy down. The cops and an ambulance are on their way."

"But... I was just standing."

"He cut you pretty badly with something. You fell and smacked your head on the side of the fire pit."

"At least you get to keep your hands on my chest," she smiled, glancing at his bloodstained hands.

"It isn't the same when I'm trying to hold your organs in."

"It can't be that bad."

"I don't want to know. Does it hurt?"

"Yeah. Mulder... can you stay with me? Even when they get here?"

"I wouldn't leave you."

The police and the ambulance arrived together. Alice remembered some parts of their trip to the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness. Someone was asking Mulder questions as they worked on getting her bleeding to slow. Blink. They were moving. Was that a siren? Blink. Mulder was holding her hand, his eyes full of concern as they raced through the streets of Eastern Oregon. Blink. They were being brought into the ER, bolts of pain coursing through her chest as they moved her. Blink. Mulder was jogging alongside her stretcher. He was still covered in blood. Blink. Darkness.

When Alice woke up, she was lying in a hospital bed, an IV in her arm. Her chest was wrapped in bandages, but she was still breathing. Mulder sat in a shabby chair next to the bed, holding her hand. "Hey," she managed to croak.

"Hey," he smiled, kissing her forehead. "You're pulling through."

"You stayed. Thank you."

"I'm here, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere."

"Mulder, what happened?"

"You were on watch. Our guy ran through the camp, and he stabbed you. Thank god it missed your heart, but you still bled a hell of a lot. Scully chased him down. Turns out he's lived in that forest for a while. He claims he's something called a Leszy, a forest creature, at least from what I can tell. I think it's just a rationalization for someone who lives in the woods and kidnaps kids. But he's in custody, and all of the kids were found. Scully's interrogating him now."

Alice tried to take a deep breath and winced. "This hurts, Mulder."

"I know." He ran a hand through her hair, saying, "I know. But I'm going to be right here. I love you, Alice."

"I love you too, Mulder."


	7. Chapter 7

Alice spun around in her chair, reading a newspaper article aloud. "'Late last night a boy claiming to be possessed by an alien spirit attacked his parents in a blinding rage'. It says he was perfectly calm after a flash of light outside. Of course, this was told by his grandmother, who's blind in one eye, but-"

"Sounds like a case for us," Mulder nodded, setting down his notepad. "You sure you want to go, though?"

Alice had been back to work for two weeks, but Mulder was being extremely protective. He'd even gone out to bring her lunch a few times, something that she was usually forced to do. "I'll be fine. Don't worry."

The two of them had been together since their last case, with Scully's full approval. She was glad that Mulder was finally happy, especially since she knew he was being well taken-care of. Alice would force him to take breaks and eat (real food, not take out all of the time), and she'd make him go to sleep at somewhat normal hours, even when he was working. "It's not too far away. Pennsylvania is only a few hours from here," Scully announced, reading over the newspaper clipping.

"What do we have on alien possession?" Alice asked in the car.

"There are X-files on it dating back to the 40s," Mulder began, pausing as he merged into the highway. "This one sounds like some sort of control device or spirit possessing the kid. I checked the local police reports for the area, and this is the second case like it in a month."

"If aliens are possessing people in this town, how do we stop them?" Scully brought up a strong point. "Do we kill the aliens, if there are any?"

"That's got to be a last resort," Alice countered, leaning forward to talk to the other two in the front seats. "We'd want to study them, if there were any creatures to find."

"Mulder, watch out," Scully chided, waving on apology at the driver who he had just cut off. "How many hours of sleep have you had?"

"In how long?"

"He wouldn't go to sleep last night," Alice told her, shaking her head. "I was going to try to drug him, but then he didn't want to drink anything. Apparently he had a report to finish."

"But I finished it," he protested. "And I got some sleep."

"You fell asleep on top of a pile of books in your chair. Why don't you pull over at the next rest stop and let one of us drive?"

Scully took over driving, Mulder being banished to the back seat. He stretched across the back, covering himself with his coat as Alice sat up front, trying to read the map of southern Pennsylvania back roads.

They arrived at the police station in the middle of the afternoon. Alice shook Mulder's shoulder, telling him to get up. "Do I have to?"

"We're on a case. Feel free to sleep in the car, though. Scully and I will leave the window cracked." He stretched and joined them, walking into the police station.

They were allowed to interview the boy, but he vehemently denied knowing anything. "I swear I didn't do it. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't remember. Please, you've got to trust me."

"You've got to tell us the truth," Scully said, watching his reaction across the table.

"I am!" The boy was pleading by this point. "No one believes me!"

"Scully, why don't you interview the grandmother?" Alice suggested. "There's no reason all three of us have to go. Mulder and I'll stay here."

Scully nodded, bidding them goodbye and headed off to ask the deputy where the grandmother lived. Mulder leaned on the table, asking, "Now that she's gone, what happened? Did you see anything weird before you blacked out?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You two'll listen?"

"Agent Mulder and I believe there are explanations for certain things that don't seem... human. Or natural. I'll put it that way," Alice nodded. "You can tell us your story. We won't think you're crazy. Especially after all that we've seen."

"Okay. So o was outside, taking the dog for a walk. We've got a Lab. Her name's Sunny. We were outside when I saw this light buzz by. Then I blanked out. The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground. Grandma was screaming. I was covered in something sticky, but I couldn't tell it was blood in the dark. When I walked back into the house, the cops were showing up. The light followed the police car for a little while, but then it disappeared."

"No unexplained nausea, vomiting, dizziness?" Alice questioned.

"No. Only when I saw the blood. I had seeing blood. I was in a car accident as a kid, and I got my arm pretty torn up. I think that's why."

Now it was Mulder's turn to ask. "Do you have any scars you've never noticed before?"

"I don't think so."

The deputy walked into the room, tapping them on the shoulder. She leaned in to confide, "Agents, there's been another one. An old woman killed a man three times her size, and she's claiming she can't remember a thing."

Alice put a hand on Mulder's arm. "I'll go. You should tell him about the X-Files. It'll make him feel better, knowing he's not alone." Mulder nodded, squeezing her hand as she stood to leave.

The woman's story seemed similar to the teenager's. She had been outside gardening around sunset when she saw a light and blacked out, and then woke up outside of a local bar. She'd been covered in blood and was picked up by the police when the bartender had seen her stab someone in the alley behind the building. He didn't mention any lights, but the won had seen them on her way to the jail that morning. She had no memory of almost the whole night.

When they had regrouped, Mulder, Scully and Alice were just as lost as they were before they had interviews everyone. Scully had gotten some autopsy photos and had arranged them on one of the beds. "They're all pretty straightforward. The kid's family were all killed with an axe, pretty cleanly decapitated and then butchered. The elderly woman stabbed this guy while he was facing her. He could have easily killed her. And that kid wasn't too strong-looking either."

"Whatever we're dealing with, it gives people super-strength," Alice added, sitting down to look at the photos while she ate from a takeout box.

"Any sort of adrenaline rush could do that," Scully countered from the chair near the window.

"Not necessarily," Mulder called from the shower. Alice and Scully shared a look, shaking their heads as he continued. "Alien possession or hijacking could cause both an adrenaline surge and uncontrollable rage, the kind that makes a kid kill his family or a grandma take on a member of a biker gang."

"Heaven help us if we're having a discussion that doesn't include Mulder," Scully laughed. "A lot of other things could account for-"

"Nothing fits like body hijacking, though. They don't even need to have implants or anything. As long as they have a susceptible mind, it's possible."

"The woman did have early-stage Alzheimer's," Alice offered, gesturing with her chopsticks. "And the boy, well, teenagers are just forming their opinions of the world. They're usually pretty open-minded. It's possible."

"Hear that, Scully?" Mulder asked, walking out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. "It's possible."

"It's also possible for you to put on some pants and talk about the case with us. From the same room," Scully chided.

"If you insist." He grabbed some clothes, returning to the bathroom. When he came back, Mulder already had a theory. "Alien possession can happen at a distance. Even if these people weren't physically abducted, it's possible. I've read of accounts like this. Some people even think that Elvis was hijacked for a time. I think that's a bit conspiracy-ish, but it's possible."

"Mulder not embracing a conspiracy? That's new."

"Some things are just too out-there, Scully."

"I'm going to run and get more towels, since you used like five," she said, grabbing a room key and heading for the door. "Do you guys want anything?"

"Do they have breakfast?" Mulder asked, looking at one of the hotel brochures. "Ooh, they do. Nice."

"We need the access code for the wifi, though," Alice told her.

"I'll check it out."

Alice and Mulder sat on one of the beds, flipping through TV channels. Mulder had his arm around her, and she had laid her head on his shoulder when he found the perfect channel. "It's an alien documentary!"

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, why not? It's your obsession, isn't it?" she asked, looking up at him. "Go ahead. It's interesting to watch these guys, anyway."

"Really?"

"Like I said, why not?"

"You really don't think I'm crazy."

"Eh, you can be a little weird, but it's cute," Alice promised, kissing his cheek. "We can watch your alien show."

"I should keep you."

"I wouldn't object to that." Alice laid her head back, watching a man with electric-shocked hair wave his hands around as he talked about how the pyramids were meant to flip upside down and form landing pads for UFOs. "Scully's taking a long time. Should we go see where she went?"

"Yeah." Mulder got up, grabbing the other room key. They put on shoes and, for good measure, took their coats. Just in case.

There was one man in the lobby, watching a baseball game behind the front desk. "Hi," Alice smiled. "Has a woman with reddish hair come up here looking for more towels."

"No, ma'am," the man said, shaking his head.

"She never made it up here. Did she take the car?"

"I thought I saw it," Mulder said, heading out of the lobby. "Yeah, it's there. Wait, what's that?"

A figure stood by the dumpster, holding something. They approached cautiously, speeding up when they realized it was a familiar outline. "Dana, are you okay?" Alice asked, jogging closer. The figure snarled, throwing the carcass that it had been holding onto the bushes. It's hands were covered in blood. "My god."

"What the hell has gotten into you?" Mulder approached slowly, keeping his distance. "Do you feel okay?"

He took a step forward, the figure growling at him. Instinctively, he stepped in front of Alice, who was watching the woman's eyes. Something looked off. Yes, they were filled with fury and unbridled wrath, but they were a strange color. Close to normal, but off somehow. "Scully? It's us. We can help."

The being ran forward, stopping when Mulder pulled out his gun. He was barely deist wrong what he was doing. It was part of his training, something almost as instinctual as protecting Alice. "Scully, we can help you. Come on."

"Mulder, it's not-"

She shrieked, moving closer. Alice could make out the blood running down her face. Whether it was her own or not, no one knew. "Please," Mulder begged. "Don't-"

"You have to," Alice whispered, watching her every move. The thing that was once Scully was moving closer, lunging at unpredictable times. She had gotten close enough to them for Alice to be genuinely worried. "Mulder-"

"Scully-" It darted forward, coming into point-blank range. It was Scully. The Scully he had spent so much time with, the Scully he had known for so long. His Scully.

"It looks like rabies, but that's too fast-acting," Mulder mumbled.

"That's not Scully. Mulder, you have to, or were next."

"I can't-"

It lunged, nearly grabbing Alice, but stopped when Mulder cocked his gun. "Mulder! That's not Scully anymore, and it's going to kill us if you don't do anything."

The being lunged again and Mulder fired, all three of them crumpling. Alice got up first, running to Mulder, who wrapped her in his arms as she called the paramedics, sobbing. When she hung up and the police had arrived, followed by an ambulance, she was the one to give them specific instructions, telling them to be extremely careful and that Scully needed to be in a secure facility. She would be transferred if they could get her stable, but things looked tenuous as the ambulance sped off. The parking lot was soon left empty, except for Alice and Mulder.

She gave him a hug, grabbed his hand, and led Mulder back to their room. He sat in silence on the edge of the bed, holding her hand as she called the Bureau and reported what had happened. When she set her phone down, he said nothing. They moved to sit on the bed, wrapping the comforter from the other bed around themselves. The alien documentary was still playing, but they paid no attention to it. They say in silence for a while, holding each other and trying not to cry. Alice broke first, tears staining Mulder's shirt during a special about Atlantis. She felt tears dripping into her hair, but just buried her head in his chest. What if they had killed their friend, the woman who had given so much for both of them?

Neither of them got much sleep. They would drift off for a few minutes, but invariably woke up close to tears, waiting for the phone to ring and give them some sort of news. A little after midnight, Alice woke to find Mulder stroking her hair, lost in thought. "Mulder?"

"Hmm?"

"Don't let go."

"I won't. I promise." He kissed the top of her head, all the while waiting for the phone to ring.


	8. Chapter 8

Alice was listening to the radio and folding towels on her kitchen table when the call came. She grabbed the phone immediately, although Mulder wouldn't have talked if he had picked it up. He had been staying with her since they had gotten back to DC three days before, and had barely said more than a few sentences each day. "Agent Hemming."

"Hi, this is Cassandra. I'm over at George Washington University hospital. I've been cleared to inform you that your partner is doing okay. She lost a lot of blood, though. She's under guard with limited contact for some reason, but I assume it's because you're FBI, right?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Alice leaned against the kitchen counter. Scully was alive. That meant there had to be a chance that they could cure her. "Did they give you a release date?"

"Not yet. I've heard they're going to transfer her somewhere else, though. That's all I've been told. I'm sorry."

"That's okay. Thank you so much." Cassandra hung up.

She had little time to process the news. The phone rang again almost as soon as she set it down. This time, no number was listed. "Hello?"

A man's voice instructed her, "I assume you've been told of Agent Scully's condition. Do not share this information with anyone. She is going to be transferred up to a secure hospital in New Jersey, from which she will head to a detention facility until she is cured."

"Okay."

"Oh, and Alice, don't say a word of this to Agent Mulder." The phone clicked, the caller having hung up.

Mulder made his way I tot he kitchen a few minutes later, raising an eyebrow at her. "Just pollers. You know it's getting close to election season." He nodded. "I'll have dinner ready in half an hour or so, if you're hungry then." He nodded again, getting a glass of water and walking back out of the kitchen.

Half the time he was so quiet she would forget he was there and be scared out of her mind when she heard a noise. He barely spoke, even to her. He must have still been in terrible shock.

When she came to find him later, he was sitting in front of the TV, watching the news. "You really should eat something. It's nearly nine, and you barley ate lunch. I can heat up some leftovers from dinner, if you want."

He glanced up. "You got toast?"

"Three words. Impressive. Yeah, I'll make you some."

She brought a plate back, sitting down beside him. "They're giving us a week off, if we want to take all of it," Alice told him, watching him eat. "They're keeping everything pretty under-wraps."

Mulder nodded. "Is there a funeral?"

"No. They haven't told me anything yet. They didn't say if they would even release her."

"This is my fault."

"No it's not." She leaned over to take his hand, saying, "Whatever possessed her is responsible. What you did... you did it to save me. To save both of us. You may have saved our lives, Mulder."

"I did something insane." The words came spilling out now. "I never saved you. I never saved her either. She's kept us out of danger so much. I was the coward that ran in, thinking he could change things, that he could solve crimes like a genius. I lost our son. I lost Scully. And I'm going to lose you, one way or another."

"Don't talk like that, Mulder." She wrapped an arm around him, asking, "What happened to your son?"

He spoke so quickly that she could only make out parts of the story, but a lot of it had to do with Scully and alien DNA and giving up his child. "I mean, what kind of person am I? I forget to water plants. You think I'd be able to handle a kid? But giving one up... I could've figured it out. I thought I'd sorted through it all, but then you came along and I just knew."

"Just knew what?"

"That I'd screw it up, like I did before. Alice, I know it's only been a few months, but... I was going to ask you to marry me when we got back to DC from that case." He looked over at her, watching her eyes widen.

"Mulder..."

"But then all of this happened. I killed your friend. You can't forgive a person for that."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I shot her, Alice!"

"But you had a good reason to! Mulder, you can't deny that you saved my life."

He shook his head. "I shouldn't have let her go out alone. I thought we were finally safe. I wanted to be there with you, and I completely ignored the risk."

"You can't blame yourself for what they did to her. Survivor's guilt, Mulder."

"It's not survivor's guilt when I killed her and ruined any chance of have of being happy with you."

She kissed his cheek, asking, "Look, do you still have the ring? I mean, if you want to..."

He nodded, standing up and heading out of the room. When he came back, he knelt down to ask, "I know this timing sucks, but Alice, will you marry me?"

"Yes." She smiled, putting on the ring and giving him a kiss. When he sat back down, she pulled him close, holding her fiancé tightly. "I love you, Mulder."

"I love you too."


	9. Chapter 9

There were a few guests as they signed their marriage certificate, but there was no real ceremony. They both didn't have much in the way of family, and Scully was the only friend they really wanted to invite. A few people that Alice knew came, but they only filled up one table at the restaurant they went to afterwards.

She had been woken up a little after 8 AM by her phone buzzing. "Agent- Yes. This is she. Okay. Can you send me the address? I don't have a pen handy. Thank you so much. Goodbye."

Mulder rolled over, raising an eyebrow. "We need to get to New Jersey. I'll explain on the way."

"Now?" He propped himself up on an elbow, yawning. "I feel like I should relish this moment, waking up next to you after-"

"You've done it before and you'll do it again," she smiled, standing up and wrapping herself in a sheet. "We've got to go."

Alice drove as she explained everything. "Scully didn't die that night. She's possessed by some sort of alien creature. They've taken her to a more secure hospital in New Jersey. Then they'll transfer her to a high-security federal institution. They wanted us to come in now, though, just to see if we can figure it out."

Mulder was quiet for a moment, processing everything. "They'll let us see her?"

"Yeah. It may be through glass or something, but they'll let us see her."

"What if she remembers me shooting her?"

"Mulder," Alice warned, "the person we talk to... it might not be Scully. It'll look like Scully, but it might not be her."

He leaned on the side of the car, using his coat as a pillow. "What if she doesn't remember us at all?"

"I don't know. We'll find out when we get there."

They arrived at the hospital early enough to be able to check in with some other visitors. However, a nurse pointed them towards a different wing of the building, where they had to go through a metal detector and were told to wait in a small anteroom for a doctor. Alice held Mulder's hand as they waited, looking at the pictures hung on the walls. The door finally opened, a blond man in a lab coat coming through. He shook with of their hands with a smile. "I'm Dr. - well, just call me Robert. You're here to see Agent Scully, right?"

"Yes. How's she doing?" Alice asked as they began walking down a long hallway.

"Well, I've never seen a case like it. She's either gone into severe psychosis, perhaps secondary to a major infection, or something we've never encountered," he confessed.

"How so?" Mulder wanted to know.

"Well, she's usually pretty quiet, but ever so often, she'll break. She almost broke a nurse's arm earlier today."

A female doctor walked up, handing Robert a chart. "This is Ellie, my wife. We met here," he explained. She smiled, shaking their hands.

"Agent Mulder. This is my wife, Alice. We met at work too."

"Nice to meet you both. Scully's pretty calm now, if you want to see her." She led them to a room with glass walls, where two armed men stood at the door. Another sat inside of the room, his gun across his lap. "They want three guards on her at all times. Agents, there's something I've got to tell you. Some weird stuff has been happening around her room. I've been in there and things have moved when she looks at them. Nothing big, but sometimes a glove will fall out of the box or a scalpel will spin on a table when no one is near it. It sounds crazy, but we've been told you two deal with crazy a lot."

"We get our share of crazy," Alice admitted. "Can we go in and see her?"

"Go ahead. Just show the guards your IDs."

They held up their badges, walking into the room when the men stepped aside. Scully lay in a bed, an IV threaded into her arm. Another man sat in a chair, keeping watch. Alice was the first to say something. "Dana?"

The woman opened her eyes, which flashed an unearthly green as she looked them up and down. "Alice. Mulder. And..? Nice to finally see you."

"Are you okay?" Mulder asked, approaching the bed. Alice grabbed his arm as if to tell him to stay out of reach.

"Scully is doing fine rattling around in here." The figure tapped its forehead. "I haven't hurt her, don't worry."

"What do you want?" Mulder questioned, pulling up a chair. "Why are you hurting people?"

"You humans... you only care about yourselves. You and your science. Your government kept me locked away, kept me alone, for almost 70 years. You all deserve to pay."

"Who did this?"

"Your FBI, your military, all of you." His chair flew backwards, whipping him into the glass wall.

"Mulder!" Alice dove after him, the guard standing and readying his rifle. Blood dripped from a gash on his forehead. She pulled open drawers and grabbed a few pieces of gauze, sitting back on the floor and pressing them to his head. "He hasn't done anything to you. Neither did those other people."

"He didn't help," the creature behind Scully's eyes spat. "He knew that you all were covering things up. And he did nothing. Neither did the girl."

Mulder took the gauze from her as she asked, "Who are you?"

"You humans would probably call me God."

"God wouldn't slam someone up against a wall for asking a question," Mulder objected, standing up.

"Want me to slam her against the wall for helping?"

Alice put a hand on Mulder's arm. "We should go." He nodded, heading out of the room. She followed, but turned to tell the being, "We'll be back. Dana, were going to help you."

On their way back to Washington, Mulder turned to Alice, asking, "Do you really think we can save her?"

"There has to be a way," she reasoned, glancing at the GPS. "I think we're going to have to dig pretty deeply into the FBI's records, though. We need to figure out what that thing is and what it's capable of. They must have figured something out if it's been here for 70 years. Wait, wasn't Roswell nearly 70 years ago?"

"That's not a Roswell alien," he assured her. "It's something else. Something way more powerful."


	10. Chapter 10

Alice and Mulder had been in their office for nearly a day straight, sorting through physical and computer files. They were still no closer to finding an answer. "Pro-possession case files go in which pile again?" Alice asked, closing a Manila folder.

"By the coffee pot. Hey, babe, while you're up, can you make some more coffee?" He perched his glasses on his forehead, rubbing his eyes.

"I'll put some on, and then I'm going to make a food run."

"We've already got Chinese and pizza leftovers."

"I can't sit and work any more. I need a break. You probably should take one too." She put her glasses back on, standing and stretching.

"I'm on to something. I've got to be."

"You were on to something an hour ago. And yesterday. You were on to something when I took a nap at 1AM, and when you woke me up to make me read something at 5. Mulder, you haven't slept, you haven't left this room for more than ten minutes, and you're going to crash soon." She put her high heels back on, moving towards the door.

Mulder sighed, setting down his work. He agreed to join her, but only on the condition that, "we head back soon. I've got some stuff to work on."

"I'm going to make you take a nap, even if I have to drug you."

"Alice."

"Fine. Let's go to that burger place down the road. It'll be quick. We can get back here and I'll let you work until nine, but then you're going to get some sleep," Alice planned, checking her watch as they headed upstairs.

"Why time is it?"

"Nearly six. You'll have a couple of hours."

"Okay."

"But after that, we're going home. We both need showers and sleep," she told him as they headed out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Mulder nodded, thinking he would bring some books home with him. "You're not staying up reading all night either. You need to sleep, Mulder."

They were both in a better mood after leaving the building for a little while, but Alice's smile dropped off when she saw their door. While they had been out, someone had strung plastic bats and paper pumpkins all over the door to their basement office. "What is all that?"

"Sometimes they do that," Mulder shrugged.

"Who?" Alice began tearing the decorations down. "That's just mean. It's cruel."

"It's a joke."

"They're making fun of you, Mulder, and I know you don't mind it, but I do." She crumpled up a string of paper pumpkins, throwing them in the nearest trash can. "I'm going to find out who did this and-"

"Don't bother. It could've been any of them." He walked into their office and went back to work as she continued to take the decorations off of their door.

"Agent Hemming," a voice said from behind her. "Or should I call you Mrs. Mulder?" She turned around to see a man in a suit watching her. "Very nice of you to be defending him."

"Are you-"

"I'm coming to warn you, dear. Don't probe into this case. Let us handle Agent Scully. Leave this alone."

She shook her head. "Not a chance. My friend, our colleague, is in danger. I'm not leaving her. She wouldn't have left me."

"Looking into the inner workings of the FBI, all of our secrets, wouldn't be good for either of you."

"I'll accept the consequences, if we can save her."

The man gave her a final warning. "You will find things you're not going to like. Life-changing things. Be prepared to accept all of the consequences." He turned and walked away, disappearing up the stairs.

"Alice, who are you talking to?" Mulder called, rolling his chair over to look out into the hallway.

She stuffed a final armful of decorations into the garbage. "No one. How's the research going?"

Alice sat in her library at home, sorting through FBI files on her laptop. Mulder was asleep in their bedroom. She had slipped part of a ground-up Xanax in his coffee (probably his twelfth cup of the night) earlier, and he had fallen asleep as soon as he laid down.

Mulder was actually the one who had remodeled the room into a library for her. When she had been living in her apartment, she had kept stacks of books everywhere. She'd always wanted her own library room, and Mulder had promised her one when she moved in. He had cleaned up the room, moved in bookcases and a desk, and had helped her shelve her collection of criminology books. He already had an office across the hallway from hers, but it was mostly taken up by filing cabinets and newspaper articles pinned to the walls on top of maps and charts tracking alien activity.

She was about to go to bed when she noticed something in Mulder's personnel file. Normally, she wouldn't have been able to access all of the notes the Bureau had on him, but she was using a special database allowing for complete access a few levels above her security clearance. In the area for additional notes, someone had attached a report that detailed the testing he had undergone at Quantico. There were the normal things like blood and drug tests, but also several copies of DNA maps. That in itself wasn't that unusual, especially for agents assigned to higher-risk cases. They could be used for identification if no other ID could be made on a body. There had been consistent anomalies circled on the scanned-in chromosome maps. Alice closed the file, thinking of what it could mean. She really should talk to him about it. About a lot of things. Shaking her head, she turned her laptop off and went upstairs, climbing into bed next to her husband.

When she woke up, sunlight was streaming in through the bedroom window. Mulder was already up. There was still steam filling the bathroom, so she reasoned that he hadn't been up for too long.

Alice headed downstairs, seeing that Mulder stood in the kitchen, flipping pancakes as he read something on his laptop, which was balanced on an overturned bowl. "Hey." Alice walked up behind him, giving him a hug. "You're making pancakes and reading without setting anything on fire? I'm impressed."

"I think I found something. I don't like it, but it's our only option." He stepped to the side, letting her read the document.

"It sounds like we're going to have to almost kill her," she observed, pulling her hair up. Mulder nodded. "And that thing is going to put up a fight."

"It's our only option."

"Are we flying up to New Jersey?" Alice asked, perching on the counter and watching him cook.

"Not today." He flipped a pancake onto the stack on a plate next to him. "Impressive, huh? They're moving her to a secure location near the bio-defense place at the fort. We'll head out there tomorrow, but we've got to flesh out a plan first. How many pancakes do you want?"

"Just two for now." Mulder made them both plates, setting them down in the small breakfast nook that overlooked the garden.

"So I'm thinking we- are you okay?"

"Mulder, there's something I've got to tell you." She took his hand, asking, "Remember that night a little before the wedding? A few weeks ago? We were sad about Scully and glad we were going to get married and full of hormones and... it must have been that night. Mulder, I'm pregnant."


	11. Chapter 11

Mulder's eyes widened as he mouthed, "Pregnant?" Alice nodded. He began to smile, pulling her over to him and into a hug.

"Mulder, I'm terrified," she whispered into his ear.

"Me too, but I promise I'll be here for you." He ran a hand through her hair, adding, "I... wow. How long have you known?"

"Just a couple of days." She sat up, explaining, "I was going to tell you earlier, but then we found out Scully was alive, and all that. I didn't want to trouble you with it then. But I thought you ought to know." She wanted to ask about the DNA anomalies in his personnel file, but it wasn't the time. She had surprised him enough for that morning. "I still can't believe it myself. I mean, I didn't think I'd be having a kid at this point in my life. Maybe in a few years, but..."

"Neither did I. I'm kind of old to be a dad, aren't I? I'm practically old enough to be your dad."

She leaned her head on his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist. "You'll be a great dad, Mulder."

They spent the rest of the day lazily researching the process they would have to put Scully through. Essentially, she would have to be brought extremely close to death to make the alien think that it's vessel was in danger and that it wasn't worth staying around. At that point, it could be captured and returned to space (or its craft, if it could be found among the hundreds of aircraft hangars the government has around the country). However, "Scully would have to be almost dead to make this thing let go of her. We're going to have to freeze her and inject her with all sorts of things, by the looks of it," Alice observed, looking up from a heavy book. "We're going to need a lot of stuff."

"It'll be risky," Mulder confirmed, "but if we can do it right, she should be okay."

The next day, they arrived at a military hospital facility with briefcases of materials. Passing through different levels of clearance, they finally reached where Scully was being held. An armed guard opened the cell door for them, allowing them to enter. Scully sat there looking bored, drawing detailed diagrams of a ship that the normal Scully would never have dreamed up. "If it isn't Mulder 1, 2, and 3."

Alice glanced down at her stomach. She wasn't even close to showing yet. How could the creature have known? "Hello to you too," She smiled.

"I'm not going to let you go through with your tests, you know," it told her, staring at the briefcases they held.

Mulder set his down. "I know. We want to talk, though."

"About what? About the sad, scared little boy whose daddy sold his sister off to some aliens, who tries to find answers that don't exist, the boy who no one loves? Or about the poor little girl who is nothing but a younger replacement for the woman he really loved? The man, scared that his relationship will fail and his child will turn out just as screwed up as the last one, all because of him? The woman who is afraid of so many things, yet only wants her husband to make someone jealous, deluding the man into thinking she loves him?"

"Stop it," Alice spat. "That's not true."

"Why marry a man who could be your father? Why marry a woman with the same hair color and the same job as the one you wanted to spend your life with? Why-"

"Give it a rest," Mulder commanded. "We came here to talk about you, not us. Where'd you come from?"

"I'm not answering any more government questions. I had enough of them. 70 years too many."

"What's that you're drawing, then?" Alice asked, moving to see the paper. Mulder walked over on the other side as Scully looked at Alice, and quickly stuck her with a needle full of sedatives. Alice reached out to catch her as she fell. "I'm surprised that worked."

"We might have less time, though. Who knows what that alien is doing to her metabolic system." Mulder and Alice pulled Scully into a standing position and carried her down the hall, straight into the closest refrigerated unit they could. They had already set up a bin full of ice water, which they carefully set her into.

Alice got to work immediately, popping open their briefcase sand removing several vials and needles. "I'm going to draw some blood before we start injecting her. Maybe it'll teach us something."

Mulder nodded, watching her work. "What do we start with?"

"I'm going to start with a standard saline solution, and then just run an IV if I can. That way we an just keep switching things out." She screwed the vials of blood closed and set them in a styrofoam container.

"You have all the antidotes, right?"

"Of course."

It was a long wait in the freezer room. They had watched her heart rate and blood pressure slowly fall, and Alice had begun injecting her with all sorts of solutions. "I started with more potent versions of standard vaccines. Chickenpox, MMR, all the stuff we've been inoculated against."

"What have you got running now?"

"Heroin."

"Heroin? You're making her OD?"

"Kind of," she admitted. "The body needs to be as close to death as possible." She pulled her coat tighter around herself, leaning into Mulder, who sat next to her.

"Are you cold?"

"I'm sitting in a freezer, throwing ice into a bath to freeze an alien. So yeah, a little bit," she laughed.

"What if she was right? It, I mean."

"About what?"

"About me screwing things up. Again."

"Nothing that alien said is true," Alice promised him. "You're a wonderful husband, and I'm sure you'll be a great father. And I love you. I love you so much, you can't begin to quantify it."

"But what if-"

"Mulder, you have to trust me. You're not going to mess anything up."

"You're not a replacement for Scully."

"What?"

"She said that I married you because I couldn't have Scully. You're not a replacement. You're... The first time I met you, you didn't object to my theories. You didn't think I was insane or spooky or anything. You've done nothing but defend me since, and when you don't agree, it's usually for a logical reason. You're not a replacement for Scully. You're way more than her. You're what I've always wanted." He kissed the top of her head.

"Fox, you really do know how to charm a girl whose freezing her ass off."

"You know, I even made my parents call me Mulder."

"Really? Well, I'll call you what I feel like calling you." She smiled and pecked his cheek, adding, "I love you, Foxy Mulder."

"Hmm... I think you should call me that from now on."

Alice laughed. "We'll see. Maybe I will."

"Hey, did she just-"

"Alice, Mulder..." Scully was sitting up, the green glow fading from her eyes. "Help me..." They rushed to the side of the ice bath. "Where am I? Why..?"

"She's fighting," Alice smiled. "Scully, your body's been taken hostage by some sort of alien creature. We're trying to flush it out."

"Well I'm freezing." She winced, opening her eyes to reveal the glow again. "You can't... do this... easily..."

"We've got all day," Mulder advised the creature as Alice added another chemical into the IV bag.

"Try me, Spooky."

They sat back, watching it fade in and out of consciousness. Every so often, Scully's head would jerk up, one of them having won the battle for control. "Why do you tell people off for calling me 'Spooky' so much?" Mulder asked, putting an arm around Alice as they stared at the creature.

"You may have gotten used to it, but it's awfully cruel. Have you heard the things they whisper about you? They think you're crazy, that you're weird, that there's something wrong with you. 'Spooky Mulder' is one of those nicknames kindergarten bullies stick to because they never emotionally mature beyond that."

"Well, I might be crazy. For a long time, the FBI made me think I was. It could've gotten to me."

"You're not crazy, Mulder," she countered. "You're wickedly smart, and I think that scares them. But you're also incredibly sweet."

"You know, they talk about you too. About you being weird enough to be with me, about Stockholm Syndrome and all sorts of things."

"They're idiots," Alice resolved, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Help me..." They turned to see that this was Scully, not the creature, talking. "Please..." She began to cry, glancing up at her IV. "What are you doing to me?"

"We have to," Mulder painfully explained. "We've got to get this thing to leave you."

"You're killing me."

There was a commotion outside, the door bursting open. A group of armed men came in, one of them saying, "We have a cease and desist order. Agent Scully needs to be taken down to the laboratories."

Mulder and Alice stood up, blocking them with their bodies. "She can't be moved," Mulder declared, counting their guns. "She's getting close to a near-death state. She's going to need medical treatment soon."

"Mr. Mulder, you know what we can do."

"I also know that if an agent dies on your watch, you'll cover it up. You can't silence everyone."

Scully coughed wretchedly, shivering. "Mulder, Alice..." Alice backed over to her, Mulder still standing off with the group of men. Scully coughed again, the blood pressure monitor dropping drastically. Her heartbeat had slowed to a crawl. With one final cough, a green most began to form above her, turning into the figure of a small alien. It gave a cry before disappearing, floating into the air vents.

"Quickly, she needs a doctor," Alice instructed, pulling Scully out of the ice bath and wrapping her in towels. "Get a wheelchair or something. If we don't get her into the medical wing in the next five minutes, she's going to die." One of the men ran for a wheelchair as Alice switched the toxic IV cocktail for an antitoxin. "It's Naloxone. It'll combat the drugs for now, but she might need a round of dialysis. And we need to get her core temperature up."

"Thank you," Scully whispered as the man returned with a wheelchair. She was gently deposited into it before they began to rush for the medical wing.

"We've got to keep her talking. What do you remember? What was it like?" Mulder asked as they took a sharp left turn.

"I don't remember. We were in the hotel... I went for towels... Where am I?"

"You're at a military base outside of DC. You were possessed by an alien," Mulder told her. "We had to do all of this to get rid of it."

"What did I miss?" she breathed, looking over at Alice. "Your hand..." Alice smiled, taking her hand in her left, showing Scully the ring and trying to keep her from getting frostbite. "Engaged?"

"Married. You were gone for a while. You missed a lot."

"Congratulations." They helped to lift her onto a heating pad, covering her in blankets as she was hooked up to several instruments near her bed. She closed her eyes with a smile.

"You can't sleep yet." Alice shook her shoulder, saying, "Besides, I haven't told you everything."

"What?" Scully winced as she turned to see Alice better. "Are you..."

"Yeah." She put a hand to her stomach, adding, "But that's fairly new."

They sat up with her, talking until a doctor verified that her temperature had reached a safe level and she could go to sleep. Scully would need to stay there for a few days to make sure he drug cocktail wasn't going to do any lasting damage, but she would be released by the end of the week if everything went well.


	12. Chapter 12

Alice stood in a laboratory in the FBI's Violent Crimes Unit, waiting for the results of a DNA test. She had finally gotten time to run Mulder's DNA to verify the anomalies that she had seen in his file. She had also run hers, just for good measure. She checked her watch - at least twelve more minutes. The door opened, Mulder walking into the lab. "Hey. What are you working on?"

She waved the question away, saying, "Just some DNA that a friend asked me to run for her. She's been swamped for the last week and a half. What's up?"

"I think we've got a case. Escapee from a supermax prison in Colorado melted though walls."

"Florence? I thought no one ever escaped from there." She leaned across the lab table, watching Mulder nod.

"That's the official story. But this guy was in solitary confinement when he went off-camera. They figured he'd gone to the bathroom area of his cell - that's the one spot they don't have a camera. But when he didn't come back on camera ten minutes later, they sent guards down there. He'd vanished. Walked straight through a wall."

"He didn't tunnel his way out or anything?"

"They turned the cell upside-down. There were no signs of a breakout. He just disappeared. Besides, the prison is built so that the inmates don't know exactly where they are in the complex. They searched the place up and down, but they couldn't find him."

"Should we fly out?"

"Yeah. I've already booked a flight. We leave in an hour and a half."

"And Scully?" The machine beeped, printing out her results, which she readily picked up and scanned. There were bands in Mulder's, but none in her own. It could still be benign. Hopefully.

"They want her to stay here. She's still recovering from a major trauma. Look, I'll meet you in the office. I've got to sign us both out, and I'm sure your friend is waiting on those results." He circled around the lab bench to give her a kiss before he left.

Alice looked over the papers again before folding them up and heading to the Financial Crimes Unit, where she shredded them. The anomaly was probably a fluke, something a few people have. Nothing to worry about. Besides, Scully had one in her file. They knew she had some sort of alien DNA, and it didn't match the fragment anomaly that Mulder had.

"Gary Wayne was serving 370 years for the murders of 13 people," the warden explained. They had met him outside of the prison, and he was walking them through levels of security as he talked. "He vanished without a trace. We've expanded to a 250-mile radius, but so far nothing has turned up. We're hoping you can give us some insight."

"He was the first breakout," Mulder observed. "Security's got to be the best in the business. Can we see the tapes from his cell?"

"Sure. They're in my office. I'll tell you, Agent Mulder, when you're keeping people like the Unibomber locked up, you've got to have some damn good security." They turned into his office, saying hello to a secretary. He opened a file on his computer and spun it around to show them. "Right there, he walks towards the toilet, and then doesn't come back. Officers Goodall and Tian went to investigate, and they found the cell empty. Nothing was disturbed."

"Mind if we see it?"

"Sure. Follow me."

They trailed the warden, who led them down several halls, making turns in the maze that only the staff knew how to navigate. Most of the cells were closed off, with only a small window allowing the inmate to see out. Some of them were a little more open, but most had windows taking up only a sliver of the door. Alice walked close to Mulder, eventually grabbing his hand. He leaned over to whisper, "Kind of creepy, huh?"

"Yeah. I know nothing'll happen, but..." She shook her head, looking around.

When the warden finally stopped walking, they were in front of a cell a little larger than a broom closet. Mulder walked in first, Alice following him. They searched every inch of the place, but there were no holes in the walls or ceiling, and no secret passages to be found. "He vanished," was Mulder's conclusion.

"There's no way he could have had help from the outside?" Alice asked the warden, sitting on the cell's bed.

"No. We've thoroughly investigated the staff that was on duty at the time, and everything checks out. This guy melted through the wall."

Mulder and Alice sat at a small diner, one of the few restaurants in town. They each watched everyone who walked by, making sure Wayne wasn't still in town. "More coffee?" Their waitress had appeared soundlessly.

"Sure, thank you." Mulder waited for her to walk away before he continued his thought aloud. "What if he really did walk through the wall?"

Alice shook her head. "Mulder, people can't walk through walls."

"Think of all the stuff we've seen. You really think people walking through walls is that out there?" he questioned, stealing one of her fries.

"It's possible, but it's more likely that he had help, or someone doctored the footage."

Alice was watching TV in their hotel room when Mulder decided to go for a run. "I'm too wired. I've got to do something. I'm going to hit the gym."

"Have fun. Don't forget a room key." She kissed his cheek, locking the door and drawing the deadbolt as soon as he left. Paranoia, maybe. But a serial killer on the loose changes people's priorities.

She had just begun to doze off when she heard someone walk in. "Mulder?" No. The door was still bolted.

"Try again." She turned to see a burly man, covered in tattoos. He still wore his prison uniform.

"Gary." Her cell phone was charging on the dresser, out of reach. She would never reach the hotel phone either. Mulder would be back soon. She had to stall. "What do you want?"

He pulled a gun from his pocket and gestured with it. "Get up." She cautiously obeyed. "Let's go." He grabbed her phone, gesturing towards the door.

She unlocked it, praying that someone would be outside. The parking lot was clear. "In the car." Alice got into the driver's seat, Gary taking the passenger's side and pointing the gun at her stomach. "Now drive. Follow my directions."

When Mulder got back to the room, he was surprised to find the door wasn't locked. Maybe Alice had gone to get ice, or down to the vending machine. Her phone was gone. But the TV was still on. And her room key was still sitting on top of the microwave. He tried to call her, dialing frantically. One ring. Two. Three. An answering machine. "Alice, damn it, where are you? You're scaring me."

Mulder was at the closest FBI building within twenty minutes. Scully was on her way - she was the first phone all he'd made in the car. He hadn't buttoned his shirt properly, and didn't bother with a tie. Ten other agents were gathered in a war room with him. Some were discussing searches, but they had nothing to go on. When the hotline phone rang, they all went silent. "FBI, this is Agent Mulder."

"Hello." Mulder waved at one of the others. _Get a trace going_. "I bet you're wondering how I got in. Just like I got out of a locked room." Scully ran in, saw that he was on the phone, and stayed silent, but grabbed his hand instinctively.

"You have my wife."

"Yes, she's alright."

"Prove it. Let me talk to her."

There was a muffled voice on the other end, which must have been Gary Wayne giving Alice instructions. "Mulder, baby, I'm okay. He hasn't hurt-"

"That's enough." Wayne was back on the phone. "You want her back? Give me a full pardon and then start passing the hat around. A million dollars gets her back alive." He hung up as Mulder gaped.

"We got a trace!" called one of the agents. "It's a Washington DC phone number."

"That's her phone," Mulder sighed, sitting down on a desk.

Scully gave him a hug, saying, "I'm so sorry."

Meanwhile, Alice was sitting in a small, darkened shed, handcuffed to a water pipe. At least he had given her a chair. Wayne stood in the corner, playing with a pocket knife. "So how'd you do it?" she asked, watching him.

"You haven't figured it out?"

"I thought you had help from the outside, but there's no way you could've gotten into my room if you were relying on a guard." She looked around while she was talking, trying to see if there were any holes in the walls to look through. Maybe she would recognize where she was. It wasn't likely, but it was possible.

"When I was a kid, I'd melt through my crib. When my brother locked me out of his room, if walk straight through the door. I've always been able to do it. So when I got arrested, I waited. I bided my time," he flicked the knife blade out again, "and I waited. I waited until I knew their routine and how to get by them. Then I just walked out."

"Why ask for immunity and money if you could always walk out of prison and walk into a bank vault?"

"I'd always be on the run. That isn't a great life. You sure do talk a lot."

"What else is there to do?" she asked, watching him cross his arms. He'd ripped the sleeves off of his prison shirt sometime earlier, throwing them on the floor of the shed. "I might as well talk to you."

He regarded her cautiously. "This isn't some FBI trick, is it?"

"Even if it was, what could I do with it? I can't go anywhere," Alice stressed. "Who's Jenny?" She tried to point, but was hindered by her handcuffs.

Wayne held up his forearm, turning to show her the rest of the tattoo, which read, 'Jenny, always'. "She was my sister. She died in a car crash. She was 21, and I was 22."

"I've got one on my shoulder. It's a bee flying in a loop. Kinda stupid, I know. But that's what you do when you think you're going to marry someone. You get stupid tattoos, and then regret them when they leave you for their chauffeur. But I guess it's all for the best." She blinked slowly. She was exhausted, but so nervous that she was surprised she hadn't jumped out of her skin. "What's the wolf mean?"

Mulder was in the war room, trying to figure out what to do. They had no leads, nothing. A search team had gone out to the hotel to see if they could find any more clues, but they didn't had much hope.

The man who had traced the call came up to Mulder, asking, "It's her cell phone he called from, right?"

"Yeah."

He spun the closest computer around. "What's her phone number?" Mulder typed it in. "All we need is a password, and then we can track it."

"Try 'trustno1' with a number one at the end," Scully recommended.

"Nope. We've got two more guesses."

"And then what?"

"Then it'll lock us out for an hour." He typed a few characters in, hesitating before exclaiming, "Got it! It's tracking now!"

"What was it?" Scully asked, watching him scroll through reports.

"'Mulder'. Here we go." He showed Mulder a point on a map of the city. "It's ten minutes from here by car. Let's go."

Alice glanced at Wayne, then at the door. "Did you hear that?"

"Sounds like a car door. Stay there," he joked, picking his gun up off of the decrepit workbench and opening the door cautiously. He went outside.

Alice bent down, picking a bobby pin out of her hair. Within twenty seconds, she had popped the handcuffs off. Rubbing her wrists, she opened the shed's back door, peering out of it to make sure Wayne wasn't standing there. She made a dash for the woods, seeing that the coast was clear.

She ran straight into a figure that had been concealed in the shadows. "Alice?"

"Mulder!" she whispered, smiling. "He's out here somewhere."

"I've got her," he radioed in, holding his wife close to him. "I've got her. Suspect still on the loose. He may be in the woods."

They watched as two agents moved in on the shed, checking to make sure it was empty. There was a rustling noise behind them, Mulder whirling around to face Wayne, who held his gun ready. "Please," Alice begged, reaching into Mulder's coat pocket while Wayne was distracted. "Let me go. They'll get you your immunity. Please. I'm pregnant."

Mulder watched their assailant for any sign that he was about to fire. They had reached a standoff. He could feel Alice grabbing a gun from his pocket, ducking out of the way as she fired, Wayne's gun going off as he fell. The shot hit him square in the chest, Mulder firing another time to ensure that he was dead.

"Wayne's down," Mulder confirmed before turning off his radio and rushing to Alice's side. She stood up, brushing the dirt off of herself. Mulder hugged her tightly, staring at the man lying on the ground. "He really could walk through walls, right?"

"Yeah." Something was dripping into her hair. _It had better not be blood_... "Fox, babe, are you crying?"

He held her tightly. "I thought I was going to lose you." The other agents started to arrive, each of them checking the corpse and making different radio calls. "I was scared to death."

They finally got back to the hotel sometime in the morning. The breakfast bar had just opened up when they parked and stumbled into their room, utterly exhausted. Alice took a shower first, Mulder wandering down to bring them back breakfast. Scully joined them soon afterwards.

Alice sleepily munched on some cereal while Mulder was in the shower, but was started when the phone rang. "Hello?"

"Hello." She knew the voice on the other end of the line.

"I heard about your little adventure. I hope you're still keeping your word."

"Yes, Sir."

"Don't let him pry into Scully's case too much. I'll give you some answers, but not all of them. He'll find out too much if he tries."

"I know, Sir."

"I heard about the tests you ran, and his results. I trust you won't let him ask too many questions."

"I won't."

"Good. I'll need to meet with you when you get back to Washington." The man on the other end hung up, Alice slowly setting the phone back down.

"Who was that?" Mulder called.

"Just someone from the Bureau," she assured him. Well, it was at least partially true.


	13. Chapter 13

Alice was sitting at home, working in her library, and humming along to the soundtrack of her favorite musical when Mulder knocked on the door. "Hey. What are you working on?"

"I'm writing up a report the Bureau asked for." She took her glasses off, perching them on top of her head and rubbing her eyes. "Nothing interesting."

"Well, I've got a potential abduction in Vermont." She could tell that he was excited to investigate. "I've already called Scully. She's going to meet me at the office."

"I'll pack some stuff," Alice said, starting to stand.

"Actually, we've been talking, Scully and I. We both think it would be better if you stayed here. You're pretty pregnant. I mean, you look like you've eaten a small beach ball. If anything happened..."

Alice bit her lip, thinking it over. "You're right. I probably wouldn't be much use chasing after aliens. I'll man the research station here." She mock-saluted, making him laugh.

"Good. I'll call you when we get there," he promised, giving her a hug. "I love you." After a second, he bent to kiss her stomach, saying, "I love you too."

"Be careful, Mulder."

"I will."

Alice spent her time either at home or at the Bureau. Mulder or Scully would call ever so often, asking her to research certain phenomena or pull up Bureau files on people. Other agents would drop off files or test results, but most of the time, she was left alone to work in the basement office. Two days had gone by when the phone began to ring. There was no number displayed on the caller ID. "X-Files."

"Mrs. Mulder?" a voice asked on the other line.

"Yes?"

"I trust you haven't told your husband about those lab results."

"How did you know..?" She stood up, pacing the office floor.

"I know many things, Alice. Keep doing as you have been. Make sure he doesn't pry too much into the Bureau's databases, and don't breathe a word of those tests to him."

"Why?"

"He will find out things he doesn't want to know, things both of you don't need to know. I can make it worth your while. Every month he doesn't find out about what you did, you'll find an extra $5,000 in your bank account."

She thought about trying to trace the call. "Who are you?"

"I think you know that, dear." He hung up, ending the conversation. When she tried to trace the call, only the FBI building's number appeared. Someone from the Bureau had been calling.

The phone rang again, making her jump. "X-Files."

"Hi, babe. How are you doing?"

"Okay. You scared me, though. What's up?"

"We're on a stakeout. I just felt like calling to see what was up."

"Aww, that's nice."

"Actually, we need you to search a plate," Scully said, taking the phone away from Mulder. She read out a number, Alice typing it into their database.

"Michigan plate registered to Andrew Li. Is that who you're chasing?"

"No, we're chasing a stolen car with that plate. Can you see if the car was reported stolen?"

"It was. The Detroit Police Department registered it as missing last week." Alice scrolled down, reading the report. "It was stolen once before, last year, by a local teenager looking for a joyride."

She could hear Mulder take the phone back. "Thanks, honey. How's the baby?"

"Fine," she smiled. "He's kicked me a couple of times. Probably misses you."

"He?"

Alice bit her lip. "I was going to tell you when you got home, but I guess it's a little late for that, huh?"

"That's great! I - he's here. We've got to go. Love you."

"I'll Skype you later, okay? Love you. Be careful, Mulder." She heard him end the call and set down her phone, mumbling, "Please be careful, babe."

10:43 PM

Alice was sitting in bed, dozing off as she watched reruns of a medical drama. She was expecting Mulder back soon. He'd called earlier, saying they were on their way home. There was a suspect in custody, and the abductions had been proven to be the result of a drug-induced kidnapping.

There was a rapping on the door downstairs, forcing her to get up. Before she had made it halfway down the staircase, a group of men had entered the house. "Relax, were FBI," one of them promised as she instinctively reached for her gun.

The oldest of the group, a man with gray hair and a breathing stoma from years of being a heavy smoker, gestured for her to sit down at the kitchen table. She sat cautiously, watching the other two men station themselves at the entrances to the kitchen. The man extended his hand. "We've never been formally introduced."

"You were the one who kept calling me," she noted, shaking his hand.

"Where's your husband?"

"He's on his way home. He had a case in Vermont. His flight should be landing really soon." She glanced at the clock, slightly nervous. What the hell did they want?

"I need to talk to you in person about him. Your husband is a very inquisitive man." He paused, taking a cigarette from his pocket. "Do you mind?"

She looked down at her ballooned stomach, confessing, "I'd say yes, but I don't think you'd care."

"Very good. You're a fast learner." He lit the cigarette, holding it up to the hole in his throat. "They said this habit would kill me one day. That was over twenty years ago."

"What do you want with Mulder?"

"Like I said, he's a very inquisitive man. But I'll get to that. First, you've heard about Samantha?"

"Yes. He's told me about her. He doesn't like to talk about it much, though."

"Well, there was a lot more alien activity in that family than just Samantha. Fox's father did some genetic engineering, far before people thought that could happen. That's how he ended up with those DNA markers you found."

"And? Why would that need to be hidden?"

"He tried to engineer the boys to have mutant strains of DNA for a reason. Yes, boys. Fox had a twin, but they were separated when they were born. Fox had some of those genes turned on. He got the intelligence, the processing speed that helps him stay three steps ahead of most agents. The other one had all of his extra genes turned on. He... he didn't turn out so well. The Syndicate hushed it all up for him, but Samantha was needed to appease them." The man paused, taking another drag from his cigarette.

"So he has a brother out there somewhere? And you want all of this covered up."

"Not exactly. What that boy became... I don't know if what he is is human anymore."

"But he's alive?"

The man nodded. "You could say that."

"And you want me to make sure Mulder never knows."

"He must not know. If he looks too deeply into his records or some of the others associated with his sister's disappearance, you need to stop him. If he finds out, not only will it ruin his life, he will do everything he can to find his brother and tear down the organization that did all of this."

"What if he finds something? What am I supposed to tell him? He won't stop looking if he-"

"I'll put it this way." The man leaned across the table. "If he finds out, he will attempt to destroy anything that stands in the way of finding his brother and avenging what's been done. If he succeeds, he would bring the FBI to its knees. He would get himself killed. I can ensure that." A car door slammed outside, both of them looking at the door. Calmly, the man added, "You are now going to go to the front door and stall him in the driveway. We are leaving from the back door. Understand?"

"Yes." She got up, unlocking the front door. Mulder was paying for his cab ride. When he turned around, he picked up his suitcase, engulfing Alice in a hug. As the taxi pulled away, she saw the smoking man in his car, pulling out of the ditch near their mailbox. He waved. "How was the flight?"

"Okay. I slept through most of it. I missed you." He had a slight trace of guilt on his face, but she brushed it off as a mix of exhaustion and stress.

"I missed you too." She gave him a kiss, walking inside with her husband.

He set his suitcase down in the front hall, thinking he would unpack the next day. "So it's a boy?" he smiled, hanging his jacket up.

"Yeah. Surprise!"

"What do you want to call him?"

"I figured we'd decide that together, but when we're more awake. I'm exhausted." They headed upstairs, Alice perching on their bed and saying, "Tell me about the case while you're getting ready for bed."

"Well, we got there and talked to the police. They figured the guy was drunk - he's a usual in every bar around there - but he insisted that he had been completely sober. So we asked him all the usual questions, and it didn't seem to add up. So we staked the place out." Mulder paused, beginning to brush his teeth. "We were waiting for something, but no aliens showed. Instead someone tried to break in. We grabbed the guy, and apparently he's kidnapped the victim and robbed him after dosing him with LSD. They guy hallucinated the abduction."

"Well that's a little disappointing," she sighed, watching him wash his face off. "You didn't miss much around here. I caught us up on paperwork, and I got to sit through some dreadful meetings. Not much else. The most exciting thing I've done is go grocery shopping."

"The glamorous life of an FBI agent," Mulder smiled, lying down next to her and clicking the lamp off.

"I'm glad you're home. It's kinda lonely here without you."

"Mhmm," he agreed, already mostly asleep. Alice watched his breathing even out and reached for his hand in the dark. _He deserves to know. But it would hurt him so much. He's already had to deal with Samantha disappearing, and finding out why. Yes, he deserves to know, but he also deserves to be happy._


	14. Chapter 14

Scully's desk phone rang late one night. She was still at the Bureau, covering things while Mulder and Alice were out. Mulder had only been gone for a couple of days, since he wanted to stay with his wife. Alice, on the other hand, had been out for nearly two weeks. The last time Scully had seen her, she was severely pregnant, walking and moving with care. "X-Files, this is Scully."

"Scully, it's a boy!" Mulder was on the other end, overjoyed. "His name's Daniel."

"How's Alice doing?"

"I'm right here," she heard her say. "Pretty drugged up, but that hurt like hell."

"I think she broke my hand," Mulder laughed. "We've got a question for you. Will you be the godmother?"

"Of course," Scully smiled, thinking of how they had discussed god others when William was born. "Thank you."

"Mulder, honey, can I talk to her?" Alice asked. "And can you get me some tea? Please?"

"Sure."

Mulder passed the phone over to Alice, heading out of the room. "So how are you really?" Scully asked, leaning back in her chair.

"Uugh, there are no words for how awful that was. I'm still drugged, but... ugh. That was way more than seven and a half pounds of pain. But his name's Daniel Samuel Mulder, and he's pretty baby-like."

"'Samuel' was for Samantha, right?"

"Yeah. If he was a girl, it would be a 'Samantha'. The 'Daniel' would've been a 'Dana'."

"That's beautiful. Thank you," Scully smiled. "I-"

"They were out of honey, but I brought sugar packets," Mulder announced.

Scully continued, "Tell Mulder than you too. I should let you rest. You deserve all the sleep you can get. Believe me, I know. Goodnight, Alice. Congratulations."

"Goodnight, Dana." Alice set the phone down, leaning back in bed. Mulder was in the chair beside her, looking exhausted. His tie was coming undone, his shirt was full of wrinkles, and he'd spilled something all over himself sometime that day. If he looked that bad, she must have looked like Death. "Thanks, babe."

He kissed her cheek, saying, "That crash diet really worked, huh?"

"Yeah," she laughed, "I've probably lost like twelve pounds in a few hours."

"Nice job." He held her hand, running his thumb over hers. "He's still asleep?"

"Yep. Seems like he's going to be an easy baby."

"If he's anything like his dad, he'll want your attention a lot."

"I'm going to try to get some sleep," Alice resolved with a yawn. "You should too. I know that chair isn't too comfortable, but..."

"Okay. Sweet dreams, babe." He gave her a kiss, sitting back down in the chair. He watched her fall into a drugged sleep, and then went to stand by the small bed they had set up for his son. They'd go home in a few days. He'd be able to have a real family. But something was nagging him. Was it memories of his first child? Of Scully? He'd been meaning to talk to her about a few things, especially since he'd found himself staring at her more than once. No. He had Alice. He had a baby. They were happy. Right?

Daniel was almost four months old when Alice and Mulder dared to leave the house for something non-work-related. Their next door neighbor, who had been working as their nanny, was glad to stay and let them go out for dinner. "You deserve it. I can stay," she had promised, telling them to go. Merle Walter had lived next to Mulder for years. She's retired from teaching kindergarten in her 60s, and now spent her days gardening and watching the Mulders' son. She'd bring him over to her house if she had work to get done, or she'd help out with chores at their house. Of course, Scully would babysit as well, but only if they had to run out unexpectedly.

When Alice and Mulder got home, Merle was knitting something on the couch. "He's been asleep for a little while," she reported.

"Thank you so much. We both needed a break," Alice admitted, setting her purse on the counter. "We've been swamped at work, and they want me to start traveling again... I have no idea how I'll be able to. Thank you, really."

"Reggie and I'll watch him if you want." She was gathering up her things, dropping them into a giant bag.

"Want me to drive you back over?" Mulder asked.

"It's not far. Besides, I brought my golf cart."

Alice headed upstairs as Mulder said goodbye to Merle, dropping her shoes in her room before padding over to Daniel's room. "Honey, Mommy's home," she whispered, seeing that he had blinked open his eyes. She could hear Mulder closing the door and locking up downstairs. She held her son for a little while, humming a song that she had forgotten most of the words to. Standing by the window, she could see the garden that Merle had worked on for many months now. Maybe one day it would rival hers, but for now, most of it looked like piles of dirt with a smattering of flowers here and there.

She finally set her son back in his crib when he had closed his eyes again. Switching on the baby monitor, she headed for the door. Alice took one look back, which she would come to regret. One of the stuffed animals that she had set on a shelf was floating, hovering above Daniel's crib. "What the..."

Daniel giggled, the giraffe toy spinning in circles over his head. "Mulder..." Alice mouthed, watching in horror. "Fox!"

Mulder raced upstairs, praying nothing had happened. He discovered Alice frozen in place, staring. "No..." She reached out for her husband, Mulder pulling her close to him. "Fox, I... What's happening?"

"I don't know."

They watched in silence until the giraffe floated down and landed next to Daniel, who promptly fell asleep. Alice and Mulder crept downstairs, not saying a word until they were well out of their son's earshot. Alice was trying not to cry. "What was that?"

Mulder paced the living room floor, saying, "When William was born... something similar happened. Scully's alien DNA did something, gave him some sort of power. We never fully understood what or how. And now... now it's happened again. I don't get it."

"What-"

"How could you have alien DNA too? That's statistically impossible." She remained silent until he turned around, asking, "Well? Isn't it?"

"It's not me."

He raked a hand through his hair. "What?"

"I found a file," she began, "when I was digging through the records for a case. It was attached to your personnel folder. It was all sorts of DNA printouts. That's not normal for an agent. So I looked into them. I noticed a weird extra band, so I did some investigating. I tested myself first. I'm normal human, 23 pairs of chromosomes and all that. But you... you have extra DNA. Something's there that shouldn't be. It's not the mutation Scully has. Yours was there from birth."

"I did this."

"No." She stood up to grab his hand, promising that, "Its not your fault. We didn't know. I didn't know until after... I should have told you, but I didn't want to scare you. I didn't think anything would happen. Everything's seemed fine."

"You should've told me... Alice, I'm sorry."

"For what?" She still held his hand, but took a half-step back.

"For ruining your chance at having a somewhat normal family. I never should have gone after you. I never-"

Alice was done trying to hold back tears. They streamed down her face as she told him flatly, "Fox, don't you dare say that."

He shook his head. "I ruined your life."

"You give me a reason to be happy when I go to sleep and happy when I wake up. When we're on certain cases... even when we aren't, there are plenty of days that I can't go to sleep and feel safe if I'm not in your arms. Goddamn it, Mulder, I couldn't imagine life without you." She twisted her wedding ring on her finger. "I don't care that we were staked out at a homeless shelter on our first anniversary. I don't care that I spent my birthday flying across the country to investigate something or another. I get to be with you, Mulder, and that's what matters. So don't you dare say you've ruined everything, because you haven't."

He pulled her into a hug, kissing the top of her head. "Thank you. What are we supposed to do now?"

"We just keep going," she said into his chest. "We raise him like any other kid."


	15. Chapter 15

Alice and Mulder came home from work one day to find multiple cars parked outside of their house. The driveway was cordoned off, a nondescript man in a suit stationed there. "What's going on?" Mulder demanded, looking over the police line to where Merle stood outside, talking loudly and waving her arms. "Where's our son?"

The man simply shook his head, saying, "Not my division. Ranells is in charge."

Alice, meanwhile, had attempted to cross the line while Mulder was talking. She had gotten near the door when she was stopped by another man, who grabbed her arm, saying, "Just a moment, ma'am. You may want to return to your husband."

"Where's my son?"

"They threw me out!" Merle ran over, grabbing Alice's hand. "They threw me out and wouldn't let me take him!"

"What is going on?" Alice pulled Mulder back, preventing him from hitting one of the men stationed on the front porch. "What are you doing in my house?"

An agent emerged carrying Daniel, who was bemusedly watching all of them, staring at the flashing lights of the cars parked all over their property. Alice reached out for him but was pushed back by an officer, who held his hand to his gun. "Where are you taking him? Please-"

Mulder chased after the car that they got in, Alice on his heels. She stopped at the end of the driveway, Mulder running down the road until they were too far ahead. He slowly walked back over to her, staring down the dirt road. He took her hand, pulling her onto the front porch of their house. By this time, Alice was sobbing. "They... took my baby. Mulder, why?"

He held her in his arms, sitting both of them down on the porch swing. "I don't know, honey. I don't know."

"We don't even know who they are."

Mulder was running his hand through Alice's hair when Merle came out of the house again. "They haven't taken any of his things. But there's a video in the DVD player you should see."

"Okay," Mulder nodded, still in shock. He shook his wife's shoulder. "We've got to get up. Merle's found something."

The three of them sat on the couch, watching a black screen. There was only a man's voice for the entire duration of the tape. "Mulders, I am very sorry to have to do this. However, you yourselves know what kind of danger your child poses to all of us. We will treat him well, but I must insist that any attempts to find him will be futile. I highly advise against it for the both of you. Go through your mourning, and then continue on as usual. If you look into this, it's not only your jobs that will be on the line."

"That voice, it sounds like-"

"The man who smokes cigarettes all the time." Alice completed his thought.

"You know him?"

"I've seen him around." She grabbed a tissue, blowing her nose. "If that's him, this is an FBI job."

As soon as Merle headed home, Mulder turned to Alice and asked, "It's because of what he can do, isn't it?"

She nodded. "I think so. Fox, what do they want with him?"

"I think they want to experiment on that DNA." He threw his tie onto the couch, his jacket following it. Alice didn't have the strength to tell him he should hang it up. "They somehow found out." His eyes widened, and he mouthed, "We've got to be bugged."

They spent hours turning the house upside down, looking for bugs. There was nothing to be found until they met up in front of Daniel's room, the last room in the house. "Should we?" Alice nodded, Mulder opening the door. There weren't too many things out of place, but that soon changed. They pulled things apart until Mulder unscrewed the plate covering the wiring of an electrical outlet and pulled out a small bug. "I'm going to go flush this," he mouthed, Alice agreeing. When he had left, she started picking things up. There was a stuffed toy fox lying on the ground, not something they had dislodged in their search. Alice picked it up, and a note fell from it.

 _Alice,_

 _I know you will be the one to find this. You know why we had to take him. Experimentation with Mulder's set of alien genes is crucial. Now that we know Daniel has inherited them, we must proceed. Remember that you are to keep Mulder misinformed. If he learns of his past, there will be dire consequences. My condolences to the both of you._

There was no signature, but a cigarette burn told her all that she needed to know. _Tomorrow morning, I am going to jam a cigarette through that breathing tube and suffocate him_.

Mulder returned, Alice jamming the letter in her pocket. "All they'll hear is the melodious sound of our septic tank."

"What do we do now?"

"I want to go to the Bureau and demand answers, but no one who can tell us anything is there now," Mulder confessed, putting an arm around her shoulders. "So I'm going to do what I always do when it's 2 AM and I can't sleep."

" _Invasion of the Giant Ants_ , or _Attack of Killer Space Clowns_?" she yawned.

"Your pick. Find us a cheesy horror movie. I'm going to go change. I'll be down in a minute."

Mulder laid on the couch, Alice stretched out beside him. They weren't processing the movie, but wanted some sort of background noise. "What are they going to do to him?"

Mulder buried his face in her hair, answering, "I don't know. But if I find out who ordered this, I'm going to kill them."

"I'll help." He held her, trying to keep his wife calm. But ever so often, he would slip back in time, remembering doing the same with Scully. Scully. He would smile when he thought of her, but then shake his head. Alice. His wife. She needed him there. But Scully would be out with him looking for Daniel now, not waiting for anyone. He really ought to call Scully.

They spent a restless night sleeping on-and-off, watching old b-rated horror movies and the History Channel (one of Mulder's favorites, because of the many conspiracy shows on late at night) and occasionally uttering a few words to each other. Both of them were awake when the sun came up, Alice dozing off sometime afterwards.

Mulder got up slowly, leaving his wife on the couch. She reached out for him, but was too exhausted to say anything. He'd gotten up and started to make coffee when she yawned and instinctively started to head upstairs. "Honey-" He stopped her, realization flooding into her eyes.

"He's gone."

Mulder hugged her tightly. "He's gone."


	16. Chapter 16

Mulder spent the day in their basement office, furiously pulling files out of overstuffed cabinets and stacking books on his desk. His dozens of attempts to access FBI data on the case were blocked, and he hadn't been able to find away around the firewall. Scully came in a little while after them, immediately hugging both of them. "I'm so sorry. I can't believe it."

"They just took him. No explanation," Mulder told her, pushing his glasses up and flipping through a dusty file. Scully pulled up a chair and began reading files as well. He tried not to look at her, not to think about her and Alice. At least they got along. They wouldn't of Alice had seen him gazing at Scully. Yes, he had to admit he did.

Alice wanted to tell him everything she knew, how they had all been threatened. _But that would put Mulder in danger. But he won't rest until he knows what happened. I won't rest until I know he's safe_. "Honey, are you okay?" Mulder had noticed her lost in thought, standing by a filing cabinet. How long has she been there?

"Uh, yeah, sorry." She shook her head, closing the drawer. "Just... thinking."

Mulder managed to smile a little, setting the folder he was holding down to get up and hug her. The phone began to ring, Scully grabbing it. Mulder unconsciously turned to watch her. "X-Files. Scully." She paused, listening, before handing the phone over to Alice. "It's for you."

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end was one she recognized, that of a longtime smoker. "Come outside. Under the tree. You know." There was a click - he had hung up.

Mulder raised an eyebrow as Alice began to leave the room. "They want me upstairs. Let me know as soon as you find something."

She made her way outside, looking around. A man was leaning up against a tree growing across the street. Alice made a dash across the road, and, seeing that the man was smoking, walked up to him. It took all of her strength not to cry. "Where is my son?"

"We finally meet in person. Walk with me, Agent." She had no choice but to follow him down Pennsylvania Avenue. "Your child is safe. There is something I must warn you about, however."

"Why do you have him?"

"Your husband's genetic... gifts, shall we say, began to appear in young Daniel. They were most concerning. We had to take him away before he did something truly disastrous. I assure you he is being well taken care of."

"You have no right-"

"Ensuring public safety is paramount, Mrs. Mulder. It's for the greater good. Now I must warn you, your husband is not one to give up a search. However, you _must_ get him to abandon this one. He will discover things about his family, about his past, about the FBI, that will kill him and the Bureau."

"How do you know so much about his family?" Alice challenged him, stopping as they had to wait to cross a busy street. "How do you know so much about any of this?"

"The Syndicate knows everyone with these genetic gifts. Besides, a father ought to know."

She couldn't help but to gape. "You're..." The man nodded, lighting another cigarette. "And you've been watching him for all this time?" He nodded again. "Why don't you tell him?"

"And destroy the image he had of his family? Why would I?"

"He deserves to know," she objected.

"What he deserves to know and what he is allowed to know are two different things. Which brings me to my point. I've told you this before, but I guess I need to make it crystal clear. You see that Secret Service agent?" He pointed to a man standing on the roof of the White House, where they were camped out front. "If any of those protesters behind us tries to jump the fence, that man will stop him, using force if necessary. We will be even more swift in dealing with any of you who tries to look into this matter. As it is, your husband has tried to access the information many times. You must stop him, or we will."

"I can't stop him. He's-"

"Jail time will be the least of his worries," the man promised her. "We have people everywhere, involved in everything. The very core of our government is build on surveillance. Believe me when I say we will find out if you allow him to access any documents." They began to walk back towards the J. Edgar Hoover building as he told her, "We can have him killed and make it look like an accident. We can fake a suicide at the drop of a hat. We can ensure that no one has ever heard of the Mulders. They never existed. We can wipe all traces of you from the face of the earth and seal the records. Nothing is out of our reach. We will find you, and we will punish you severely. Consider yourself warned."

He turned down a side street, leaving Alice to walk back to the building alone, furious. When she passed an ash tray on a restaurant's table, she had an idea. Maybe the man was telling the truth, but maybe not. Pretending to fix her shoe, she bent down, grabbing the cigarette butt the man had put out in the ash tray on top of a garbage can on the corner. She dropped it in her coat pocket, heading back to the Bureau and going straight to the lab.

A few hours later, her data had been confirmed. The man's DNA exactly matched half of Mulder's, minus the extra injected alien bits. The smoking man really was his father. She made sure to burn the results of the test before going back downstairs to the X-Files office.

"We were starting to worry," Scully told her. "You've been gone for a while."

"They wanted me for some financial questions," she explained, grabbing a coffee mug and turning the machine on. "Apparently we'd filed a few receipts wrong a month or so back, and we had to rake through everything after that point to make sure we hadn't screwed anything up massively. The financials guys are good at their jobs, I'll say that much."

"Hmm. Listen to this," Mulder said, reading from his laptop, "'Reports of cover-ups are widespread and continuous. However, there is a constant rumor that there exists a special part of the FBI dedicated to alien experimentation and appeasing alien visitors. This shadow group goes by several names, but is called The Syndicate in popular lexicon'. Doesn't that sound like a lead?"

Alice by her lip, thinking. "I think we should drop this and leave it to the kidnapping experts," she told them, writing something on a notepad on Mulder's desk. _We're definitely bugged. It was confirmed upstairs. All of us_.

Mulder closed his laptop, agreeing. "They'll be able to crack it faster. We should probably try to find a case to keep us busy."

"That's a good idea," Scully nodded, moving to check for bugs behind a bookcase. Mulder watched her bend, forgetting to feel guilty about it. She held up a small metal square, which she set in a coffee mug. In all, there were five bugs in their office, which were all snapped in half, set in the cup, and covered with coffee.

"It's a coverup," Alice told them both as soon as they had begun disposing of the bugs. "It's got to be a massive coverup, and it goes all the way up to the highest levels. We have to look into this."


	17. Chapter 17

"Mulder, babe, you should get some rest." Alice sat down next to him in his home office. She had quit hers across the hall hours ago and gone to sleep, but woke up in the middle of the night to find his side of the bed untouched. Again. He had been working tirelessly, trying to hack into the FBI's secure files, but so far had only been given 'ACCESS DENIED' warnings.

"Not yet." He yawned, but kept working, not looking up from his computer and the lines of code that scrolled across its screen.

"Foxy, you haven't slept in almost three days. You're going to wear yourself out."

He raked a hand through his hair, which Alice had been telling him to wash. "Tired. I should sleep, but... X-Files."

"You're not going to get any good work in unless you get some sleep. Being tired will slow you down and make you call things wrong," she leveled with him. "It's nearly 3AM. Take a shower, and then come to bed. I'll let you sleep for a few hours and then wake you up, if you want to work early. Okay?"

"Alright." He took his glasses off and followed her out of the office. When Alice went upstairs half an hour later, Mulder was already snoring on his side of the bed. She smiled, kissing his cheek and turning the lamp off. There was a noise outside, something like a car door. She stood, heading to the window. A lone car sat out in the bushes at the end of their property, with two people inside. One slept in the passenger's seat while the other was looking through a pair of binoculars. She quickly drew the curtains.

Shaking her husband's shoulder, Alice woke him up. "Mulder. Mulder, you need to get up."

"What's wrong?" he yawned, rolling over.

"No, you need to get up. There's someone outside."

"Whah?"

"There's someone watching the house." He sat up slowly, Alice continuing, "There's a car in the bushes by our mailbox, down at the end of the driveway. Two people are in there. It's a stakeout."

Mulder got up, peeking though the curtains. "They're definitely watching the house."

"What should we do? There aren't many ways out of here that don't go past them." She walked over and took his hand, watching the men in the car. "If we take different cars-"

"It's not much use. They're FBI. They'll know where we are." He closed the curtains again, getting back into bed.

"What are we supposed to do, then?"

"We wait." He put his arm around her, pulling her close. "We wait and see what they want." He had half a mind to text Scully and see if she was being monitored. Well, he should text Scully anyway. They hadn't grabbed a coffee or anything in a while.

There was a knock at the door around 10AM. Alice left Mulder's office, where she had brought her laptop to keep him company while she worked. He continued typing away. "Mulder, it's them." She opened the door, Mulder listening intently.

"Morning, ma'am. Is your husband home?" one of them asked. Mulder stepped out into the hall, the men brushing past Alice to grab his arms. "Fox Mulder, you are under arrest for cyber crimes against the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they've been read?"

He looked over at Alice, who had a hand over her mouth. "Yes."

"Come along, Mr. Mulder."

They began to lead him away, Alice running after them down the driveway. "Wait!" One of the men turned to acknowledged her, but she stopped them in their path. Kissing her husband, she reminded him, "I love you."

"I love you too. I'm sorry." She watched as they marched away, putting him in the back of the patrol car. As they drove away, Alice dialed the only person she knew who would definitely help them.

"Scully."

"Mulder's been arrested. It's something against the FBI. They took him away..."

"There's no record of his arrest," Scully reported after long hours of scouring the FBI's databases. "At least not in anything I have access to." She had immediately started looking. Alice had driven to the Bureau as soon as they'd taken Mulder away, hoping that she and Scully would find something.

"I'm going to ask Skinner. That's all I can think of doing." In reality, Alice had already tried to call the smoking man. She had left a series of messages for him, but he hadn't called back.

"I'm going to make a few calls," Scully told her. "We've got a few contacts in the Department of Justice, but I don't know if they'll be able to find out anything that we don't already know."

Alice made her way upstairs, not bothering to knock on Skinner's door. He was sitting at his desk, quietly working on something. Without looking away from his papers, he told her, "I'm surprised you didn't come up here earlier."

"Where is my husband?"

"I don't know." He finally looked up, promising her, "I've been told that the FBI has placed him under arrest. I also know that he's currently being held at a maximum-security institution in USP Lee near Pennington Gap. I'm not supposed to tell you that, but I like you and your husband, Mrs. Mulder."

"Is there anything you can do?"

Skinner sighed, shrugging. "I don't know why he's being held. I've been told it had something to do with a security breach. Other than that, I know nothing about it. I'm supposed to tell you to stay out of it, that someone will contact you at the appropriate time. So I'd stay near a telephone, if I were you."

The hall had been darkened, but Mulder could still hear his neighbors. On one side was a man convicted on twelve counts of first degree murder who had taken up painting in prison after he was judged to be nonviolent. He and Mulder had been talking, but they had only seen each other briefly, when the man was led away for his hour of exercise. On the other side was a man who had been part of a hacking scheme that had stolen millions from several banks and attempted to distribute it to charities. He had tried to escape twice, but had decided to wait out his term of 35 years, since he still had the possibility of parole. The man across the hall had been talking to them earlier. He was in for an armed robbery that had resulted in the deaths of two police officers, but had discovered religion in prison and spent most of his time reading biblical commentaries.

A guard approached, followed by a man who remained in the shadows. "Mr. Mulder, a visitor for you." The guard left, the man stepping forward and lighting a cigarette.

"Nice to see you again, Fox."

"You too, Smokey. Not in the best of situations, but…"

"I'd warned your wife to keep you away from this."

"You've talked to her?"

"More than once, in fact." He crossed his arms, taking another drag from his cigarette. "You see, Fox, there is a reason you're here. Poking around in FBI files about yourself, about the inner workings of the agency, is not good for you. Do you want to know why?" Mulder nodded. "I will only give you this information if you swear that you will not act on it."

"I swear, then." He stood at the barred door, watching the man intently.

The man sighed, beginning his story. "Before you were born, some engineering was done by the Syndicate, the same group that took Samantha. They wanted to see what a perfect mesh of alien and human DNA would be like. Of course, they didn't perfect it in one try. The studies were discontinued after you. Fox, you received in vitro treatments that gifted you with a heightened intelligence and quicker processing abilities, which is what gives you a natural edge over many other FBI agents. However, you didn't end up receiving all of the alien DNA, because you weren't alone in your mother's womb. You have a twin brother, who received a larger dose of alien DNA." Mulder sat down on his bunk in shock, the man continuing, "Unfortunately, not all of that DNA was good. Some of it gave you two heightened abilities, but his… his genes were more activated, producing results that were, frankly terrifying. He was taken away a few months after you two were born. Daniel exhibited inherited tendencies unlike your own. They were following the same progression as your brother's, which became dangerous quickly. They put your entire family at risk. We had to act. Both of them are being held in a secure location, where they will not be able to harm anyone and can be studied in peace."

"Where does Alice come into this?"

"She was working on a project, going through personnel files, when she noticed an extra DNA report on yours. She had some of your DNA tested, and noticed extra bands unlike Agent Scully's. She'd grown concerned, and I had to let her know." The man put his cigarette out, squishing the butt on the floor. "It was only after Daniel was taken that she realized the extent of what had been done. We instructed her to keep this from you, since we know what you would do with such highly sensitive information."

"Damn right! You people ruined my family, experimented on me my whole life, stole my child-"

"Fox, calm down. You'll wake the other prisoners."

"- and now you're holding me like I'm the criminal? Sure, I tried hacking the database, but illegal human experiments, kidnapping, threatening Scully and my wife and I… that surely stacks up to more."

"Mr. Mulder, be glad we didn't shoot you. All of this could have been dealt with much easier if we had had you killed. We'd sweep your wife and Agent Scully under the rug, shred and delete all of your records, and we'd be done with. Now we've got a massive liability on our hands," the man retorted. "You are one very lucky man."

He turned to leave, but Mulder called him back. "Am I allowed one question, since I didn't get my phone call yet?"

"Ask away."

"What's his name?"


	18. Chapter 18

Alice had parked her car and was escorted over to the building, where she had to walk through a metal detector and have her ID run through the government's system. She had to check her purse and her coat before being allowed to walk to the warden's office. It had been nearly three months since she had seen her husband. He hadn't been allowed to call her, and very few letters were allowed out.

A stout man walked into the room, shaking her hand. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Mulder. I'm Warden Ruiz."

"Afternoon. Am I going to be allowed to see my husband?"

"Even better. We're going to release him to your custody."

"I thought he'd committed a huge federal offense."

"Someone in the FBI decided that we didn't need to be holding him." Ruiz took out a folder, handing her some papers. "I just need your signature on the lines next to each red arrow, and we'll be able to release him."

Alice read over the forms, signing each one and filling in the required information as Warden Ruiz called for a guard to fetch Mulder. A few minutes later, Alice was sent to wait for him in the parking lot. "He'll be out soon, but we've got to go through all the checkout procedures."

She leaned against the car, watching for any sign of movement by the outer gate of the prison. Finally, a figure walked out, looking around until he spotted Alice. She had a head start, running up to hug him. "Fox!" She kissed her husband, refusing to let go of him. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you too," he smiled, taking in the sight of his wife again. "Can we get out of here?"

During the drive home, Alice told him all about the cases she and Scully had been working on, about how Merle and her husband had brought over a bunch of garden fresh vegetables the previous week, about anything and everything she could think of that he'd missed. Mulder was relatively quiet, but finally asked, "Why didn't you tell me about everything?"

"About he smoking man? Mulder... I didn't want all of it to crush you. I knew you would freak out and stop at nothing to find your brother. Believe me, I'd do anything to have Daniel back, but you'd get people fired and killed if you tried. Someone would die if you tried, I know it."

"How long were you keeping that from me?"

"Not long. I had to... Not only would you put your life in danger, you'd endanger dozens of other people too. The Syndicate isn't something to be messed with. They aren't afraid of taking drastic actions just to prove a point."

"For decades, I didn't know I had a brother," he shook his head, staring out of the window. "And I passed that on to my son. Why didn't you tell me if you saw something odd in that file?"

"I didn't want to worry you-"

"My son is gone be-"

"Foxy, please." She kept her watery eyes on the road, telling him, "I love you. I never thought you were what made Daniel so... different. I didn't want to hurt you or worry you. And I don't want you to get killed. You can't blame me for that."

"I don't know what to think, to tell you the truth."

Although they had arrived back in DC as the sun was going down, there were still things to be done. Scully met them at their front door, saying, "Get packed. There's a case in Florida we have to check out. Folks in a little, middle-of-nowhere town are seeing strange lights. Something just crash-landed in a field across from the high school. We need to get there as fast as we can."

"This town's got one hotel, one high school, and one and a half grocery stores, huh?" Mulder asked as they unpacked their suitcases in a small hotel room. The hotel was stuck between a pizza place and a closed-down Mexican restaurant.

"The craft was reportedly taken inside the old Winn-Dixie store near the school," Alice read from her laptop, watching Mulder set their suitcase next to the bed. "The store moved out a few years ago, but no one's bought the building yet."

"We can drive over in the morning," Scully said, lying on her bed. "It isn't too far away."

Alice's phone started to ring. Looking at her watch, she noted, "It's kind of late for someone to be calling" before answering with a "hello?". She listened for a few minutes before hanging up to tell the others, "That was Agent McLaughlin in Miami. There was a crash landing in the water."

"An alien craft on Miami beach?" Mulder asked incredulously, sitting down on the bed.

"He wants to meet with us tomorrow. We're going to have to split up. Why don't you two take the one here and then meet me in Miami?"

Alice was up earlier than the others, driving towards a Miami address she had been provided with the night before. She finally found the man she was looking for, sitting outside of a Starbucks, dark hair concealed under a telltale red hat. She dropped into the chair opposite him. "Agent McLaughlin?"

"Call me Luke." He held out his hand. "You must be Agent Mulder. Not the original."

"Alice, please. Tell email what you've got."

"A group of teenagers was out partying on the beach when they saw these lights. At first they thought they were seeing a ship, but it got too close, and then began rising before crashing into the ocean. I heard this was stuff you worked on. I'd say we've got a little less than 24 hours before any evidence is destroyed."

"Where are they holding it?"

"Down at the bay, in an old boathouse. Let's go." He stood, whispering, "Leave in opposite directions. Head for the marina over the bridge. I'll meet you at the intersection past Publix, and you can follow me from there. I think we've got a tail." He glanced over at a man who sat reading the newspaper. "He's been following me all morning."

She nodded, loudly telling Agent McLaughlin to, "Have a nice day at work, honey."

Mulder and Scully broke into the old building, which had been cleared out sometime that morning. There were no traces of alien crafts, and except for a few boot prints, no traces of the UFO retrieval team either. "Let's hope Alice finds something," Scully said, pointing her flashlight at a row of empty shelves. "She usually does."

From her tone, Mulder reasoned, "You're mad at her too?"

Scully turned to him, confessing, "Doesn't this all seem a little odd to you? You ran into this woman who believed everything you said, blindly, exactly when it seemed like you needed to. Everything she does is for you. No self-servingness at all. Something just isn't adding up." After a pause, she added, "And it doesn't help that she reminds both of us of a younger version of an old girlfriend of yours. It doesn't seem right."

"Scully-"

"And she has all the answers. She finds things people of her clearance aren't supposed to. Her source, we've never seen him. How do we know he even exists?"

They followed the shelves back towards the freezer section of the old store, Mulder saying, "You sound like the conspiracy one now. But you have a point. You know, she lied about my brother, too."

"Why? If he's in the same place as Daniel… why would any reasonable mother not want to get her son back as soon as possible?"

Mulder paused, thinking of William. "There's something else, Scully. I've had a lot of time to think, and I figured something out in prison. I love you."

Alice arrived at the marina just in time to meet up with Agent McLaughlin. "In here." He directed her to an old boathouse off of the main road. He opened up a concealed trapdoor in the floor, holding it open. She led them downstairs, where a metal craft was lit by spotlights set up all around it. A group of men and women worked in stations around it, some of them taking pictures, some collecting samples of the materials it was made out of, and some getting ready to open what seemed to be the door.

"Oh my god... they're real."

"I thought you were a believer, Mrs. Mulder."

She stared, watching the teams work. "Conceptually, I thought it was possible, but… they're real. We really aren't alone." Eventually, she took some pictures, texting them to Mulder.

A general announcement was made to "Stand back! We're opening the hatch!"

Two video cameras were set up facing the door of the UFO. One man in a Hazmat suit (who had clearly drawn the short straw when deciding who would go) ran over and pulled the door open. A rush of seawater came out, pulling the bodies of two aliens with it. Alice took pictures of these too, watching as figures in Hazmat suits crowded around. She made her way over as one of them noted, "Grey aliens. Edgars, bag them up and have them marked for 51. I'll make the call."

"Wait. Can I see them?" Alice pushed her way through the crowd, bending over the bodies.

"They're drowned, ma'am," explained a woman taking photographs. "We recovered the craft hours ago. They were likely dead by then."

"Unless these things can hold their breath for a long time. Or don't need oxygen at all."

"All of our research shows-"

"Damn your research. They could be a complete different species. They might have no radial pulse, or no readable temperature, or-"

"Ma'am, they're consistent with what we've seen before," the man in charge said. "Now if you'd like to examine them, go ahead. You can't cut them open here, but you may take measurements and the like. You can have one while Edgars bags up the other, but only until then."

She was able to examine the alien for a little while, taking pictures and measuring it every which way. When Edgars took it away, she took pictures and measurements inside the UFO itself. Although it was only big enough for three people to fit in comfortably, she squished in with the team and got to work, covertly swabbing surfaces and taking small scrapings of metals and fabrics, just like she'd taken samples from the aliens themselves. Hopefully they'd be able to figure something out.

Mulder and Scully arrived just in time to see the craft loaded into a truck. A separate truck was backing in at the boathouse's back door. A group of people in Hazmat suits carried two bags towards the truck. Mulder began to run towards it, but he was intercepted by Alice. "Don't worry. I've already examined everything," she whispered. "I've got samples from the UFO and the aliens. Mulder, they're real!"

"Mrs. Mulder," Agent McLaughlin called. She walked back over to him and was talking as Mulder went to check out the trucks.

"Sorry, sir, we've boxed everything up already. Look, I know you're FBI. This place is lousy with Syndicate guys," one of the suited woman told him. "But you'll all have your chance at 51. Besides, they're regular greys. Nothing unusual."

 _Syndicate guys? They really_ _ **were**_ _in charge of a huge coverup. And Alice had known. I trusted her._ Mulder made his way over to his wife, tapping her on the shoulder. "Can I steal you from Mr. British for a moment?"

McLaughlin laughed, telling him, "Go ahead."

He and Alice walked a few steps away. "They think we're Syndicate guys. I-"

"I got Syndicate authorization on this one."

"What the hell else are you covering up?" He crossed his arms, looking at her in bewilderment. "What else do you know?"

"Mulder, I-"

"No." He shook his head, taking a half-step back as he continued, "I've got alien DNA. I have a brother I don't know about. I have a kidnapped child that my wife isn't going after. I have a wife working with the Syndicate. What else are you keeping a secret?"

"I kept all of that so I wouldn't hurt you," she spat back. She could see Scully watching them, leaning on her rental car. "I did all of that to protect you. I'd do anything to find my baby. Meanwhile, I can tell you're keeping things from me. Like how you stare at Scully when you think I'm not looking. I know you're-"

"You're deflecting," he deflected. "You've just shown up at the right time and come up with the right answers a whole lot. It's like… like you've been assigned to me. Alice, do you love me?"

She took a deep breath before responding, "Of course. And do you love me?"

"I don't know."


	19. Chapter 19

Mulder hadn't been home in days. When they'd finished up the case in Florida, Alice had flown back immediately. Mulder had flown back a day later with Scully, going directly to work. He'd stayed in the FBI's basement offices for nearly three days, Scully bringing in food and helping him do research. She'd gone out to the house once, but no one had answered the door.

After days of not hearing from Alice, Scully had gotten suspicious and broken in. No one was home, but the computer in Alice's office was still running. Spreadsheets and emails of flowing data scrolled by, but none of the numbers made sense. _Maybe they were coordinates? Some sort of encrypted message?_ Scully emailed them to herself and Mulder at the Bureau, thinking she'd investigate them later. There were no messages on the answering machine apart from her own phone call. Opening the refrigerator, she found that someone had bought groceries recently, and had boxed up leftovers. Upstairs, she found that the bed had been slept in and not remade, and one of the toothbrushes in the master bathroom was still wet. Someone had been here recently.

Before she left, she opened a door that had been closed every time she had visited. Daniel's room stood exactly the way it had when he was taken by the Syndicate. Stuffed animals were still on the floor, and a pack of diapers was still knocked over. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust. On a hunch, Scully took a moment to go up to the attic, since the ladder leading to it was right outside Daniel's door. There were the normal boxes - the fake Christmas tree, Christmas decorations, photo albums - and then she came to boxes of things from Mulder and Alice's childhoods. Opening up one of the boxes with Alice's name on it, she found printouts of DNA sequences and encoded notebooks, jumbled among awards and old mementos. One special folder caught her eye.

 _X-Files Dept. - Agents Mulder & Scully_

 _Objective: Infiltration and investigation of Agent F. Mulder's department in order to assess his knowledge of the S. Mulder and X. Mulder cases. Further action may be needed once this is assessed._

 _Instructions: Agent A. Hemming assigned to X-Files department. Aforementioned agent is to gain the trust of agents F. Mulder and D. Scully, and report her findings on their knowledge to superiors. Action will be taken by Agent Hemming to limit their knowledge on the cases of the Mulder children. If necessary, further actions will be taken to prevent investigation by Mulder or Scully._

 _Duration: Indefinite_

Scully closed the file and tucked it into her coat, making sure to leave the rest of the box undisturbed. When she got back to the Bureau, Mulder was out. He'd left a note saying he was going to get lunch and that he'd be back as soon as he could. She sat down at the desk and started going though the file she had taken and the data she had emailed herself, and was shocked to find documents that explained everything.

Mulder soon returned, and Scully began talking immediately. "I've found some files that are extremely… insightful. I ran them through the Bureau's decryption algorithms, and I learned a lot about who your wife is. She was assigned to us by members of the Syndicate, even if she didn't know who they were at the time. Mulder," Scully looked up from the papers she had spread across the desk, "your wife is a wiła."

"A what?" He sat down in the chair opposite his desk, trying to read the papers upside down.

"A wiła. They're Polish folklore creatures that make you fall irrationally in love with them. I have reason to believe that she was found and tailored for you. They wanted to monitor us, so they found one of the most, well, I'll say _influential_ creatures in their arsenal." She handed over the folder, Mulder flipping through everything she had found. "She didn't know all of it until after her assignment, but they told her eventually."

"So she was assigned to me?"

"That's what it looks like. I'm sorry, Mulder." She took her glasses off, shaking her head.

"So that's why I was so much more concerned with her…"

"I figured it was because you had a new wife and a new baby-"

Mulder shook his head. "I never would've gotten married with you held hostage by an alien. I at least would've waited. Thinking about it, a lot of the things I've done weren't totally sane. Wait, Scully, why did it stop working? If she can make anyone fall for her, why'd it stop working?"

"I don't know."

He set the files down in his inbox, on top of a packet of divorce papers.

7:46 PM

Alice stood in her kitchen, cleaning up the remnants of dinner. She'd eaten in her office, and she was planning on returning there. Three or four more hours of solid work would probably lead her to where Daniel was being held. She was so close she could feel it. As she set a plate in the dishwasher, there was a _click_ of the front door lock, making her whirl around. Mulder stood in the shadows of the front hall. It had to be him. She was used to the silhouette. They spent a long moment staring at each other before he spoke. "I know what you are." She said nothing, watching as he approached. "I know what you can do. What you've done."

"It's not like that. You don't know-"

"I do know. I know that you were hired for your unnatural abilities. I know that you were assigned to me."

"But do you know that I love you?"

"Please. Don't lie to me."

"I'm telling the truth," she promised, watching him cross his arms, leaning back on the kitchen counter. "I love you. I was hired to keep you away from the studies that were done on members of your family. I was supposed to distract you, because you were getting so close to the truth. And yes, I did use the… powers I was born with. But then I actually fell in love with you, and I didn't want to lose you, so… so I amped up the juice. I made you addicted, so dependent that you married me while Scully was suffering. I knew you didn't love me, not really. But when Daniel was born, I thought you would. I thought you'd at least love him. So I dialed it down, and for a while, you did love us without being forced to. But then it wore off."

Mulder was silent for a few minutes, trying to comprehend it all. Finally, he asked, "How could any one person be so manipulative?"

"Because I love you. I knew you wouldn't love me. I mean, just look at your relationship with Scully. I can tell you're in love with her. You always will be. I was just incredibly selfish and thought you'd come to love me if we were married. Especially after Daniel…" She turned away, looking out the window that was over the kitchen sink. "I'm sorry. I really do love you. I just have to realize that you don't love me. That you never have. Not really."

"Did you care about our son?"

"Yes. That's what I've been doing - looking for him. I'm close, Mulder. Just a few more hours and I'll have a location."

He came up behind her, looking out the window too. "How do I know you aren't lying?"

Alice took a deep breath before answering. "There are some things you just can't lie about." She turned around and took his face in her hands, kissing him one last time. "If you want to leave, go ahead. But I can promise you that when I find Daniel… wherever he is, your brother will be there too."


	20. Chapter 20

Alice had spent the last few hours driving. It was easy enough, considering traffic was light at 2 AM. She'd finally broken into the FBI files about Daniel and had found the location of the base he was being kept at. She took off immediately, only grabbing a few things on her way out the door. There were only a hundred miles or so left... but of course she'd have to show up to the base in the morning. She'd had enough time to formulate a plan in the car, and had made several phone calls ordering fake IDs and other things she would need.

Meanwhile, Mulder had fallen asleep at his desk in the basement of the Bureau. Scully had given up reasoning with him for the night and had long since gone home, but Mulder had stayed, trying to hack into the encrypted files containing his brother's location for a while. Scully had left him with a reminder that he needed sleep and some food other than sunflower seeds. A pinging noise woke him up. His laptop was making nose, signaling that Alice's phone had gone out of range. Even though he'd left her, Mulder still checked up on her and secretly spied on her progress concerning Daniel and his brother. _Phone out of range. Phone out of range._ He clicked on the tracking tab, watching the website trace the route she was on. She'd been moving for hours. He cross-checked the route and found that a small square in the middle of nowhere, something like 80 miles from where Alice was, had no label. There was no street view, no roads nearby. The FBI's databases listed it only as government property. Grabbing the phone, he dialed JFK Airport. "I need a plane ticket. Earliest flight possible."

Alice sped towards her destination, stopping a little after 3 AM in a small town that advertised the last gas station and hotel for nearly a hundred miles. This had to be it. She'd spend the next day gathering what she needed and staking out the building, but first, sleep.

She woke up to her phone ringing. "Alice, hey, I've got the stuff you wanted. I'm dropping it at the back of the gas station. It'll all be in a paper bag."

"Thanks, Ash. I'll drop the money there in an hour or so." Hanging up, she was tempted to go back to sleep. But she had to case the facility, figure out her method of attack. Maybe a call to Mulder… no, he wouldn't answer. She dialed their house, half hoping he would be there.

"You've got the Mulders. We're out right now, but please leave a message." At least she heard his voice.

Mulder had called Scully from the plane, telling her where he was going. She thought it was ridiculous and that they'd get themselves killed, so she would be flying out later that day.

While Mulder spent the day tracking Alice, she spent the day driving around the low buildings out in the middle of cornfields and empty roads. She'd only come across one other car, and had constantly been checking for arial surveillance. So far, she hadn't seen anything. Pulling back into her parking space at the only hotel in town, she noticed a new car nearby. The town wasn't exactly a big tourist destination. Casual UFO seekers knew the small town was a hotspot, but few people stayed for long outside of the peak season. Casually driving by, she noticed the backseat had a few things thrown into it - shirts still on hangers, a pair of tennis shoes, a tube of toothpaste. Nothing out of the ordinary for someone stopping through. However, on the way to get more towels from the front office that night, she saw a light on in one of the rooms. Being unable to resist, she peered into the window, where an opening in the curtains allowed her to see a man sitting at the table, looking rather disheveled. Even from the back, she could tell that his shirt hadn't been ironed and he hadn't shaved in a few days. He held a bottle of something. When he turned to look at the TV, she realized she knew his profile.

Alice knocked on the door and waited. It swung open a few seconds later. Mulder leaned on the doorpost, saying nothing. "Are you drunk?"

"Eh, until about twenty minutes ago," he waved away the question, opening the door further to let her in.

She sat down on the bed, watching him retake his place at the small table. "Foxy - Mulder, sorry - What's going on? You never drink… Why are you here?"

"I flew out as soon as I figured out where you were going."

"Why?"

"If my brother's in there… if William's in there… damn it, if Daniel's in there, I want to know."

"And your plan is what exactly?" she asked, watching him drink the last of whatever was in the bottle.

"Walk in and make it up as I go along."

"Suuure. You should get some rest, then." She stood, walking over and taking his elbow, guiding him over to the bed. He nodded sleepily. "Get some sleep, Mulder."

He nodded, already half asleep. "Thanks, Scully."

Alice turned away, heading out the door. _I will not cry_.

Bright and early in the morning, she left for the military base, dressed in the suit she had been given and carrying all the fake IDs she had bought. Before she drove off, she checked out of the hotel and walked by Mulder's room. She could see him through the window, still asleep. "Goodbye, Foxy."

At the first gate, she was waved through, courtesy of the fake visitors' pass in her front window. At the second gate, she had to hold up her ID. _So far, so good_. The building that she had seen most of the scientists going into had plenty of parking and only one security guard. "Hey, Henry," she smiled, walking up to the air-conditioned box at the gate. The elderly man waved, buzzing her in.

Now came a series of hallways, each looking like the next. Alice followed the signs, heading for the main laboratory. "Ma'am?" She turned around, coming face-to-face with a burly security guard. "Ma'am, may I see your ID?"

She took a deep breath, smiling. "Officer..." She glanced down at his name tag, "Garner. Do you really want to question me?"

"I need to know if you have… proper authorization."

It was starting to work, but she had to channel her powers to make him believe her. He was pretty strong. "Really? I have a better idea. You're going to go into the bathroom and start bawling. When someone asks you what's going on, you're going to tell them that you proposed to a woman you just met in the trailer park outside of town, and she said no. You won't remember me."

He nodded, jogging away and beginning to tear up. Alice sighed. Using all of that power at once was draining. But she had a lot more to do. A few hallways and a flight of stairs later, she entered a lab, manned by a woman who looked like she was ready to punch someone. "Only eight people have access to this part of the facility, and you're not on the list."

Alice sighed, unzipping her jacket. "Dr. Margrave, have you ever fallen in love with anyone?"

"What? Ma'am, you're going to have to - uh..." She took her gloves and goggles off, leaning on her workbench. "You know, she looked like you. She had red hair."

"But you cheated on her, didn't you?" Alice asked, mentally pushing her. "With a friend." Margrave nodded in fright. "Then you're going to go to the freezer room and lock yourself in. Drop your keys on your desk. Go on now." Margrave obeyed, Alice watching her go. As soon as she left the room, Alice turned and opened the padlocked door at the other end of the room. Inside, she found an observation room with a long table covered in papers, a sheet of glass between it and an open room with two beds in it.

She stayed in the shadows, watching the people in the room. There was an older man, near Mulder's age, with greying hair and the same nose, but a rounder face. He sat reading a book, paying no attention to his companion. The other bed was taken up by a teenage boy, who was occupied throwing a baseball up in the air and catching it over and over again. _The older one has to be Mulder's brother. And the other one… oh my god. Daniel. Why are you aging so quickly? My baby…_ She put a hand to her mouth, stepping further back into the shadows. The younger of the two looked up at her, making eye contact. He set the ball down, saying something quietly to the older man. "Who are you?" they both asked, looking at her. "You're not one of the usual scientists."

Alice approached the glass, putting her hand to it. "Daniel? And..?"

"Peter," Mulder's brother answered. "Who are you?"

"How do you know my name?" Daniel asked, coming up to the glass. He had Mulder's eyes.

"My name's Alice," she said, a few tears trailing down her cheeks. "I'm your mother." She looked over to Peter, adding, "I'm your sister-in-law. You're his uncle. I'm married to your twin brother. Well, I was. We're getting divorced, but… I want to help you."

"How do we get out?" Daniel asked, looking around for an exit. "They sealed up the wall they put us through. They slide food in through a mail flap right there." He pointed to a space above the desk.

"You both have special abilities, right?" They nodded. "You can both move things. Daniel, I've seen you do it. Peter, I bet you can too. Just concentrate on the glass and push."

"If we get out, the first person who sees us'll put out an alert," Peter told her. "Even if they see us on camera."

Alice thought for a moment, but broke into a smile. "Think you two can kill the camera system for a little bit?"

"Probably," Daniel nodded. "Get under the table."

Alice crawled under the wooden table covered in files. There were a few seconds of silence before a tremendous crash, glass cascading all over the small observation room. Peter and Daniel carefully climbed through the newly-made window, jumping down from the table as Alice got up and dusted herself off. "Let's go."

Mulder, meanwhile, had stolen into the building, Scully trailing him. They'd made it to the level above the lab and only had to knock out one guard (the one blubbering about being rejected had been easy to avoid) before an alarm klaxon began blaring. "Ten bucks that's her," Scully muttered, holding up her badge as someone ran by.

Within seconds, Alice, Daniel, and Peter ran into them. "Mulder?" Alice gasped, seeing that he and Scully were surprised too. "We can have a nice family chat later, but this is Daniel, and this is Peter. Your brother." Mulder stared, looking Peter up and down. They did look quite similar.

"Mulder, we've got to go," Scully reminded him as another guard approached.

"Step away from them, ladies and gentlemen," he commanded.

"Go," Alice hissed to Mulder and Scully. "I'll stall them." Scully raised an eyebrow. "Go." She turned to the guard, smiling and gushing, "Hellooo. I do like a man in uniform."

Mulder watched in shock, wondering if this was what she had done to him. Scully grabbed his arm, pulling him towards the stairwell as Alice was occupying the guard.

"So, you're my brother?" Mulder asked as they jogged upstairs. "And my son… you grew up fast. I'm sorry I wasn't around-"

"Mulder, we need to concentrate on getting the hell out of here," Scully said, peering around the corner. "It's clear. This place seems too empty."

"Don't jinx it," Daniel told her, following his dad up the next flight of stairs "There are a lot of guards and a lot of scientists. We're holding some of them off, but I don't know if we can keep all of them away."

"We don't have long." Alice joined them, breathing a bit harder than normal from running up the stairs. "Stop." A squadron of guards took up the hall in front of them. "To the left." They tore down a passageway that led to a branching hall.

"Left again," Peter instructed, hearing the guards running after them.

Alice turned around, ready to face the whole garrison if she had to. Scully pulled Daniel away, leading him down another hall. She was gone, Peter following in her footsteps. Mulder had stopped. "You can't take all of them alone."

"I have to. You two get out, take Daniel and Peter. Take care of them for me."

"They'll shoot you on the spot."

"I think I can convince them otherwise," she reasoned.

"Look at you. You're almost out of energy already. You have to-"

The group rounded the corner, Alice quickly glancing back at Mulder. "Go!" He ran as she used all of her remaining will to bring the men and women to a halt.

They dove into the car, Scully urging Mulder to start driving. He shook his head. "We've got to wait for her."

"We're going to die if we wait for her!"

Scully turned around to see Alice running from the building, looking like she had fought a war singlehandedly. Mulder jumped out of the driver's seat, running over to help Alice as men with guns emerged from the building. Peter took over the passenger seat as Scully started the car up, Mulder and Alice getting in the back seat. They began driving, breaking through the fence before they made it to the main road. The last of the bullets ricocheted off of the back of the car as Scully floored it, the speedometer ticking close to 100 miles an hour.

Daniel sat in the middle seat, Mulder to his left. Alice was draped across both of them, her head in Mulder's lap. _She's exhausted. I've never seen her this tired. Like all of the energy had been sapped out of her. Was this from all of the mental pushing people around?_ He shoulder was bleeding. She'd been shot. It looked like the bullet had grazed her, but had dug decently into her shoulder. Blood dripped onto his shoes, but he didn't care. Daniel pressed a towel to her shoulder, helping to stop the bleeding. Mulder ran a hand through her hair, keeping it away from her would. Alice smiled, closing her eyes. "Don't sleep," he told her worriedly. "Just… not yet."

Scully drove until they were nearly out of gas. She'd gotten on and off the expressway, doubling back a few times. They finally stopped to get gas, dividing tasks. While half the group ran to the restroom, the other half would pump gas and change the license plate on the car out for one of the five they had in the trunk. When they switched, the other group would run for food and finish getting gas. "No credit cards," Scully reminded them as she helped Alice stand, half-carrying her into the restroom.

"I look terrible," Alice smirked as she waited for Scully, leaning against the counter. Luckily, no one else was there to stare at her, bloody and exhausted. When they got back into the car and began driving again, Alice laid her head back in Mulder's lap, wincing when her shoulder hit his knee. She'd already downed the maximum recommended amount of aspirin, but being shot still hurt. At least they'd made a bandage, tying a towel onto her shoulder with Mulder's tie.

They kept driving until nearly 11 at night, finally stopping at the Mulders' Massachusetts home. All of them agreed that the old vacation house was the best option for hiding out. Even though no one had been there for years, they'd be able to live in the house for a few days. Scully parked in the garage, making sure they drew all the curtains before turning on any lights. Alice lay down on the fold-out couch, looking paler than normal. Her breath was shallow, but she waved their concerns away, kissing her son's forehead as she sent him upstairs to bed. Peter sat up with them for a little while, talking about everything he'd missed. He finally went to bed around midnight.

Mulder and Scully sat with Alice, exchanging glances as she slept and woke often. Mulder went upstairs to take a shower and shave (something he hadn't done in nearly a week while on the case), Scully staying with Alice. When she woke up, she saw Scully watching her. "Dana, I don't look good, do I?" Scully bit her lip. "C'mon, you're a doctor. Tell me."

"You should go to a hospital."

Alice shook her head, looking at her shoulder, which she felt begin to bleed again. "We can't be seen at a hospital. They'd know. We can deny it if we go back to work soon. They'd doubt us, but we could deny it. If I go to a hospital, they'll know for sure that we broke Peter and Daniel out."

"You want to risk your life for that?"

"It's four to one," Alice breathed, shaking her head. She reached out for Scully's hand. "Dana, promise me something. If anything happens… take care of Mulder. And the others."

"I will, but you're going to be-" she looked up as Mulder came back downstairs.

"I'll watch her. You can go get some sleep."

Scully nodded, turning back to Alice as she stood up. "I will."

"Thank you."

Mulder took Scully's chair, sitting next to Alice. "How are you feeling?"

"Like crap," she laughed, hers ugh turning into a shiver halfway through. He brought her another blanket. "What are you going to do about them?"

"I honestly have no idea," he admitted. "I'd send Daniel to school, but it'll have to be far away so they don't catch on. Peter'll have to get a job where they won't notice him. A gas station, a bowling alley, a grocery store, something like that. But you'll be able to help me think, right?"

"Mulder, you honestly can't think I'm going to make it. If you did, you wouldn't sit up all night with me."

"Don't be cynical." He took her hand, trying to get her to smile.

"Mulder, there's a black ring around everything. I have to try to keep my eyes open. Every time I blink, I think I won't be able to open my eyes. It feels like something's crushing my chest and draining all my energy. I'm going to die, Mulder."

"No, no you aren't," he assured her, halfway trying to assure himself.

"Take care of Daniel," she instructed. "And watch out for Peter."

"Alice-"

"Foxy, I'm sorry."

"Please, don't-"

He leaned over and kissed her cheek, Alice whispering, "I love you."

Mulder and Scully stood in the shade of an oak tree, looking at a marble stone in the ground. The grass had just started to grow over the grave, reclaiming the soil that had been turned up. Scully said nothing, watching Mulder stare at the gravestone. He was silent for a while. "You really did love her," Scully reasoned, seeing the sadness that lined his face.

He nodded. "I think I did."

"Let's say you did. It wouldn't do any good to be mad at her now."

"Yeah. What are we supposed to do now?"

Scully took his hand, looking up at the sky. "We keep on living."


End file.
